WRITERS     OF     THE     DAY 


GENERAL   EDITOR:   BERTRAM   CHRISTIAN 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


By  W.  L.  QEORQB 

NOVELS 

A  BED  OF  ROSES 
THE  CITY  OF  LIGHT 
ISRAEL  KALISCH.    (American 

Title:  UNTIL  THE  DAY  BREAK) 
THE  MAKING  OF  AN  ENGLISHMAN 
THE  SECOND  BLOOMING 

SHORT  STORIES 
OLGA  NAZI  MOV 

MISCELLANEOUS 

WOMAN  AND  TO-MORROW 
DRAMATIC  ACTUALITIES 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


ANATOLE 
FRANCE 


By 
W.  L.  GEORGE 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


First  Published  in  WJ 


CONTENTS 


PAGl 


I.  INTRODUCTORY 7 

II.  SATIRIST  AND  CRITIC  .        .        ,  .26 

III.  PHILOSOPHER  AND  THEOLOGIAN    .  .      60 

IV.  HISTORIAN  AND  POLITICIAN         .  .      77 
V.  THE  CRAFTSMAN  AND  THE  MAN  .  .    100 

BIBLIOGRAPHY  (FRENCH  TITLES)  .  .122 

ENGLISH  BIBLIOGRAPHY        .        .  .    123 

AMERICAN  BIBLIOGRAPHY     .        .  .125 

INDEX 126 


AUTHOR'S  NOTICE 

In  this  monograph  I  hare  used  the  translated  titles  of  the 
works.  When  French  titles  appear  it  should  be  inferred 
that  the  book  in  question  is  so  far  untranslated. 

6 

2024485 


TO   MY   FRIEND 

SASHA  KROPOTKIN  LEBEDEFF 


INTRODUCTORY 

IRONY  is  for  the  ironic.  He  lias 
shown  himself  military  at  the  last, 
but  I  believe  Anatole  France  would 
have  smiled,  a  little  wistfully,  if  told  that  a 
young  man  had  sentenced  himself  to  read 
every  one  of  his  works  and  to  write  a  book 
about  them  while  there  raged  round  him  a 
European  War.  Such  an  atmosphere  may 
seem  unpropitious,  but  it  was  not  really  so ; 
it  was  an  atmosphere  of  paradox;  it  was 
odd  to  analyse  the  great  pacifist  while 
Europe  writhed  in  conflict;  still  odder  to 
think  of  him  as  throwing  aside  his  pen  and 
at  the  age  of  seventy  taking  up  his  forsworn 
sword.  But  in  the  case  of  Anatole  France 
the  work  is  as  great  as  the  man  and  it 
afforded  me  a  contrast  with  patriotism. 
This  background  of  patriotism,  so  queerly 
compounded  of  beer,  sweat,  fine  courage, 
7 


WEITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

self-sacrifice,  self-interest,  of  insane  pre- 
judices, heavy  ignorances  and  melting 
heroisms,  was  so  exactly  what  I  needed 
to  bring  out  the  dapper  quality  of  the 
great  Frenchman's  thought.  No  muddled 
impulses  here,  but  a  clear,  cold  light  which 
reveals,  together  with  all  that  is  beautiful, 
all  that  is  ugly ;  here  a  brain  that  is  without 
illusions,  and  yet  without  bitterness ;  that 
is  not  taken  in  by  flags,  and  priests,  and 
frontiers,  yet  at  the  same  time  can  love 
priests  for  their  faith,  flags  for  their  symbol- 
ism, frontiers  for  the  contrasts  they  create 
in  man.  In  On  Life  and  Letters,  Anatole 
France  tells  us  that  during  the  war  of  1870 
he  sat  practically  under  the  fire  of  the 
German  guns,  with  M.  F.  Calmette,  reading 
Virgil.  I  did  not  write  these  lines  under 
the  fire  of  the  German  guns  but,  in  the  hectic 
atmosphere  of  war-time,  to  write  about 
Anatole  France  created  in  me  no  doubt 
much  the  same  kind  of  feeling  as  was  his 
that  day. 

I  do  not  apologise  for  the  egotism  which 
8 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


is  already  invading  this  monograph,  and  I 
suppose  I  shall  remain  egotistic  as  I  go  on. 
For  the  works  of  Anatole  France  are  too 
bulky,  too  many  to  be  appraised  one  by  one  ; 
they  raise  so  many  issues  that  a  fat  quarto 
volume  would  hardly  suffice  to  analyse  all, 
and  it  would  be  rather  dull.  Believing  that 
criticism  is  "  the  adventures  of  the  soul 
among  masterpieces,"  I  am  much  more  in- 
clined to  give  the  adventures  of  my  intellect 
(claiming  no  soul)  among  the  works  of 
Anatole  France.  I  have  read  very  little 
about  him,  indeed  but  one  book,  by  Mr 
Georg  Brandes,  and  in  the  early  part  of  1914 
a  number  of  articles  when  Anatole  France 
paid  us  a  visit.  They  are  very  distressing, 
those  articles,  as  they  appear  to  have  been 
written  mainly  by  men  who  do  not  know 
what  they  are  talking  about,  but  can  talk 
about  it  exactly  to  the  extent  of  a  column. 
I  refer  to  the  alleged  evolution  of  Anatole 
France,  of  which  something  must  be  said  a 
little  further  on. 

The  temptation  to  translate  long  quota- 
9 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

tions  was  very  great,  for  translation  is  a 
challenging  exercise  and  an  uneasy,  but,  so 
far  as  possible,  I  have  resisted  it.  I  think 
it  only  fair  to  say  that,  as  a  rule,  I  have 
not  translated  very  closely,  but  attempted 
to  render  selected  passages,  fitting  the  style 
to  the  matter;  that  is,  for  philosophic  or 
descriptive  passages  I  have,  as  much  as 
possible,  used  Latinised  English ;  for  the 
more  familiar  portions  I  have  drawn  upon 
our  slender  stock  of  Anglo-Saxon.1  As  for 
the  classifications,  Anatole  France  satirist, 
critic,  politician,  philosopher,  etc.,  they  are 
necessarily  rather  rough;  they  overlap  be- 
cause not  one  of  his  books  is  one  thing, 
and  one  thing  only.  In  that  direction  too 
I  must  claim  the  reader's  indulgence. 
Yet  another  word :  I  come  neither  to  bury 

1 1  should  like  to  say  in  this  respect  that  I  am 
greatly  indebted  to  Mr  John  Lane,  who  owns  the 
British  copyright  of  most  of  the  works  of  Anatole 
France,  for  leave  not  only  to  quote  portions  of  his 
translations,  but  also  to  retranslate  and  condense  the 
French  text.  A  full  list  of  the  English  titles  of  the 
works  will  be  found  at  the  end  of  this  volume. 
10 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


Anatole  France  nor  to  praise  him ;  there  is 
in  one-man  criticism  a  danger  that  it  should 
be  too  favourable,  for  the  critic  tends  to 
choose  as  a  subject  an  author  whom  he 
whole-heartedly  worships.  Now  I  do  not 
worship  Anatole  France;  I  have  had  to 
read  every  one  of  his  works  over  again  in 
the  last  few  weeks,  and  if  there  is  any- 
thing calculated  to  make  one  hate  a  writer 
for  evermore  it  is  to  read  all  his  works 
one  after  the  other.  People  are  afraid 
to  criticise  Anatole  France  adversely;  he 
seems  to  have  attained  the  position  now 
accorded  to  Galileo  (who  was  tortured),  to 
Joan  of  Arc  (who  was  burned),  to  Wagner 
(who  was  hooted),  to  everybody,  in  fact,  who 
ever  did  anything  worth  while.  In  his 
early  years,  when  de  Maupassant,  Zola, 
Daudet,  were  alive,  he  was  ignored ;  every- 
thing was  done  to  keep  him  down:  the 
Academic  Franchise  went  so  far  as  to  give 
him  a  prize.  But  times  have  changed ; 
Anatole  France  is  acclaimed  all  over  the 
world;  everybody  quotes  him,  and  those 
11 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

who  cannot  quote  him  quote  his  name; 
he  is  above  criticism.  This  would  be  very 
bad  for  him  if  he  were  not  also  above  adula- 
tion. People  dare  not  say  the  things  which 
should  be  obvious:  that  he  repeats  him- 
self ;  that  he  is  sentimental ;  that  his  novels 
are,  from  the  point  of  view  of  French  tech- 
nique, incoherent ;  that,  as  expressed  by  his 
characters,  his  conception  of  love  is  rather 
disgusting;  in  fact,  they  take  all  the 
humanity  out  of  him  by  endowing  him  with 
all  the  graces ;  they  erect  to  him  a  statue 
which  represents  him  just  about  as  much  as 
the  sort  of  statue  they  occasionally  put  up 
to  some  highly  respectable  politician  whom 
they  depict  stark  naked,  and  beautiful  as 
a  young  discobolus. 

The  reason  probably  is  that  it  is  not 
enough  to  understand  Anatole  France; 
one  also  has  to  understand  the  French,  the 
gay,  sensual,  garrulous  French  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  the  gay,  sensual,  courteous  French  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  the  gay,  sensual, 
cynical  French  of  Voltairian  times,  and  the 
12 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


sensual,  cynical  French  of  to-day.  Anatole 
France  is  all  these,  a  sort  of  historical  con- 
gress of  French  epochs,  a  retrospective 
exhibition  of  French  mentalities.  That 
perhaps  explains  the  confusion  which  reigns 
in  the  minds  of  a  great  many  people  as  to 
his  alleged  evolution  from  reaction  to  red 
socialism,  a  confusion  so  great  that  it  seems 
to  have  i  ouched  even  Mr  Georg  Brandes. 

It  is  not  wonderful  that  Anatole  France 
should  be  so  representative,  for  he  is  a  pro- 
vincial by  extraction,  a  Parisian  by  birth 
and  environment.  The  whole  of  his  biog- 
raphy is  revealed  in  his  books,  so  it  is 
enough  to  say  that  he  was  born  in  1844,  in 
the  Quarter  (that  was  inevitable),  that  he 
grew  up  in  his  father's  old  bookshop  near 
the  quays  of  the  Seine,  listening,  as  he  grew 
up,  sometimes  to  the  talk  of  republicans,  for 
those  were  the  days  of  the  Second  Empire, 
much  more  often  to  that  of  elegant  half- 
worldling  abbes  and  aristocrats,  for  his  father 
was  a  pronounced  Royalist  and  Catholic, 
as  was  also  his  mother.  .  .  .  Old  books, 
13 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

good  talk,  and  the  Seine  lazily  flowing  under 
the  plane- trees  before  there  were  steam  trams. 
It  is  all  very  like  Anatole  France,  like  the 
four  volumes  of  Contemporary  History  where 
the  bookshop  is  the  centre,  like  Pierre 
Noziere  and  My  Friend's  Book.  Then 
little  France  (whose  real  name  is  Thibault) 
went  to  the  College  Stanislas  to  be  brought 
up  as  a  good  Royalist  child.  But  he  did  not 
do  particularly  well  there,  thus  bearing  out 
the  legend  of  the  prize  boy.  Notably  he 
loafed.  Anatole  France  in  life  has  always 
loafed,  which  is  natural  enough  in  one  who 
was  born  near  bridges.  Who  would  not  loaf 
who  has  a  flowing  river  to  watch  ?  It  might 
be  said  that  Anatole  France  has  loafed 
through  thirty- five  volumes. 

As  he  grew  up  he  accomplished  desultory 
tasks,  he  taught,  he  wrote  articles  for  the 
papers;  in  1868  he  published  his  study  of 
Alfred  de  Vigny;  in  1873  and  1876  he 
gave  us  two  volumes  of  verse,  Po  ernes  Dores 
and  Les  Noces  Corinthiennes.  Not  very 
startling  or  attractive  verse ;  however  deep 
H 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


Anatole  France's  poetic  feeling,  he  has  never 
approached  greatness  as  a  poet,  perhaps 
because  he  was  always  too  calm,  too  de- 
tached, because  so  seldom  did  his  eye  in 
fine  frenzy  roll.  Only  when  at  last,  in 
1879,  he  published  his  first  work  of  creative 
prose,  two  longish  stories,  Jocasta  and  The 
Famished  Cat,  followed,  two  years  later,  by 
The  Crime  of  Sylvestre  Bonnard,  and  in 
1882  by  Les  Desirs  de  Jean  Servien,1  was 
born  the  Anatole  France  we  know  to-day. 

I  cannot  lay  too  much  stress  upon  that. 
Anatole  France  was  potentially  in  1881  what 
he  is  now.  It  has  continually  been  sug- 
gested that,  up  to  1898  and  the  revival 
of  the  Dreyfus  case,  Anatole  France  was 
a  reactionary,  a  clerical,  an  anti- democrat ; 
that,  somehow,  in  an  unexplained  manner, 
he  underwent  a  change  of  heart  and  suddenly 
turned  into  a  humanitarian  socialist;  and 
a  few  bold  folk  hinted,  when  The  Gods 
are  Athirst  appeared  in  1913,  that  Anatole 

1  The  title  is  given  in  English  if  the  work  has  been 
translated,  in  French  if  it  has  not. 
15 


WKITEKS  OF  THE  DAY 

France,  because  he  painted  a  dreadful  and 
therefore  not  over- kind  picture  of  the 
French  Revolution,  had  reacted  again. 
Briefly:  the  genius  as  weathercock.  It 
has  even  been  suggested  that  Anatole  France 
wrote  this  reactionary  book  to  make  his 
peace  with  the  respectable  classes  and  to  get 
into  the  Academic  Fran§aise:  the  answer 
is  that  Anatole  France  was  a  member  of  that 
august  body  seventeen  years  before  the 
publication  of  the  book. 

An  examination  of  Anatole  France's  early 
works  is  vital  to  this  question,  notably  of 
Jocasta,  which  has  very  little  to  do  with  the 
myth,  for  there  is  no  (Edipus  to  murder  his 
father  and  marry  his  mother;  Anatole 
France  is  too  modern  for  that.  It  is  a  queer, 
horrible  story  of  the  daughter  of  a  shady 
middleman  who,  instead  of  marrying  the 
young  doctor  she  loves,  weds  a  wealthy 
and  sinister  old  Englishman,  whom,  to  her 
knowledge,  his  valet  murders.  Fearing  dis- 
covery and  haunted  by  remorse  (the  Furies), 
emulating  Jocasta,  she  hangs  herself.  This 
16 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


story  would  hardly  be  worth  mentioning 
save  for  its  fine  literary  style  and  its  high 
characterisation  of  Fellaire,  the  solemn, 
kindly,  bumptious,  sentimental  middleman, 
of  Haviland,  the  dry  and  methodical  col- 
lector, if  already  here  Anatole  France  were 
not  at  the  age  of  thirty- five  indicating  what 
he  would  become.  For  he  makes  a  journal- 
ist say  in  conclusion,  after  discussing  the 
immortality  of  the  soul  and  deciding  that 
it  is  really  a  very  complicated  question: 
"  Fortunately  the  Almighty  is  not  a  subject 
for  an  up-to-date  par." 

In  the  second  story,  The  Famished  Cat, 
where  again  we  have  the  quite  magical 
picture  of  Godet-Laterasse,  the  seedy  re- 
volutionary, and  of  the  absurd  people  con- 
cerned with  absurd  arts  at  the  Famished 
Cat  tavern,  we  find  another  incarnation  of 
the  future  Anatole  France:  the  sculptor 
Labanne,  lazy,  ironic,  who  moralises  on  art 
rather  as  will  Choulette  in  The  Red  Lily, 
fifteen  years  later.  But  it  is  in  The  Crime 
of  Sylvestre  Bonnard  that  Anatole  France 

B  17 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

most  clearly  indicates  his  own  future.  This 
is  just  the  straggling  story  of  Bonnard,  the 
old  professor,  who  observes  the  world,  in- 
terested in  women,  Benedictine  chronicles, 
the  Arc  de  Triomphe,  cats  and  the  love 
affairs  of  fourteenth- century  queens.  The 
old  gentleman  watches  over  the  grand- 
daughter of  one  whom  he  loved  but  never 
married.  He  behaves  quite  quixotically, 
protects  her  against  a  schoolmistress  who 
ill  treats  her ;  at  last  he  kidnaps  her  to  make 
her  happy,  and  all  ends  well  in  spite  of  a 
little  tragedy  when  the  girl  marries  and  old 
Bonnard  sells  his  books  to  give  her  a  dowry. 
It  is  all  most  incoherent,  and  one  never 
quite  knows  what  Sylvestre  Bonnard' s  crime 
was;  it  may  be  the  abduction  (ror  old 
Bonnard,  learned  in  the  law  of  the  sixth 
century,  knows  nothing  of  the  Code 
Napoleon),  or  it  may  be,  which  is  much  more 
likely,  that  when  he  sells  his  books  there 
are  some  he  cannot  bear  to  part  with,  even 
to  afford  his  ward  a  dowry,  and  that  he  goes 
by  night  now  and  then  to  sieal  a  few  of  them 
18 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


from  the  pile.  The  whole  story  is  full  of 
charm,  and  Mr  Georg  Brandes  is  unjust 
when  he  describes  it  as  a  simple  tale.  It  is 
much  more  than  that :  it  singularly  reveals 
Anatole  France  himself,  for  here  we  have 
a  man  aged  thirty- six  writing  as  a  kindly, 
rather  cynical,  faintly  ironic  old  gentleman, 
fond  of  the  classics  and  of  humanity.  Chil- 
dren make  him  sentimental ;  he  lectures  his 
cat  on  immortal  truth.  He  says :  "I  have 
always  preferred  the  folly  of  passion  to  the 
wisdom  of  indifference."  And  that  is  true, 
only  one  feels  that  he  loves  best  the  folly  of 
passion  when  it  afflicts  others.  The  book 
ends  on  a  melancholic  note,  which  is  perhaps 
not  so  melancholic  as  it  seems,  for  it  brings 
out  life  passing  by,  all  golden  and  bloody, 
as  an  old,  old  ship  with  a  sumptuous  figure- 
head, with  ragged  silken  sails,  carrying  the 
embalmed  corpses  of  those  who  first  signed 
on,  and  their  own  sons  growing  up,  full  of 
sap,  their  thick  hair  streaming  in  the  wind. 
Already  in  this  book  Anatole  France  is  gentle. 
He  is  remorseful  because  "  he  has  made 
19 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

fun  of  an  unhappy  man  "  ;  he  is  full  of  pity 
for  a  beggar- boy  who  will  not  accept  a  bit 
of  gingerbread,  and  says :  "  He  dares  not 
touch  it :  in  virtue  of  precocious  experience 
he  does  not  believe  in  happiness. ' '  He  states 
a  general  theory :  the  time  that  God  gives 
each  one  of  us  is  as  a  precious  fabric  which 
we  embroider  as  well  as  we  may.  This  man 
of  thirty- six  is  already  old ;  he  has  laid  his 
hand  on  the  head  of  man  as  if  he  were  a  little 
child,  and  said :  "  Creature  that  thinkest 
to  find  eternity  in  the  intensity  of  thy  suffer- 
ings, in  their  permanence,  in  the  impossi- 
bility of  thy  loves,  and  the  greatness  of  thy 
charms ;  oh,  little  creature  on  this  blind 
world,  I,  old  man,  old  God,  who  have  seen 
so  many  worlds  like  this  one  busily  spinning, 
let  me  beg  thee  be  not  so  urgent,  so  hot,  so 
young.  For  I  am  old,  old  as  truth,  and  I 
know  the  shortness  of  thy  pains." 

Who  is   Sylvestre   Bonnard?     Sylvestre 

Bonnard  is  Bergeret,  is  Coignard,  is  Brot- 

teaux,  he  is  the  first  of  all  those  nice  old 

gentlemen  who  pass  through  the  pages  of 

20 


ANATOLE  FKANCE 


Anatole  France.  He  has  never  changed; 
he  was  born  like  a  young  rat  in  a  book- case, 
and  so  he  remained.  Those  old  gentlemen 
believe  in  service,  resignation;  they  are 
tolerant  and  indulgent,  and  are  always  ready 
to  say  when  the  time  comes,  to  any  God  you 
prefer,  for  they  don't  mind:  "  Et  nunc 
dimittis  servum  tuum,  Domine." 

The  philosophical  humanitarian  who  was 
to  defend  Dreyfus  existed,  then,  in  1881  ; 
the  subsidiary  motives  existed  too  in  those 
years.  For  instance,  in  My  Friend's  Book 
(1885)  the  small  boy  says:  "I  saw  my 
father,  my  mother  and  the  maid  as  very 
gentle  giants  who  had  witnessed  the  birth 
of  the  world,  immutable,  everlasting,  unique 
of  their  kind."  That  is  exactly  what  the 
little  dog,  Riquet,  thinks  of  man  in  general 
and  what  Anatole  France  perfidiously  allows 
us  to  conclude  man  has  always  thought  of 
God.  Already  he  is  cynical,  and  yet  smiling^ 
for  he  says :  "I  have  faith  no  longer  in  my 
old  friend,  life :  yet  I  still  love  it."  But 
there  is  in  this  book  a  more  important  indica- 
21 


WKITEKS  OF  THE  DAY 

tion  of  the  man  to  come ;  it  is  not  only  the 
alleged  Socialist  of  1898  that  already  exists, 
but  the  passionate  pagan  of  1914.  In  My 
Friend's  Book  he  takes  a  little  girl  to  a  Punch 
and  Judy  show.  Punch  kills  the  devil,  and 
Pierre  Noziere  (Anatole  France)  remarks: 
"  The  devil  dead,  good-bye  sin.  Maybe 
•beauty,  this  ally  of  the  devil,  will  vanish 
with  him.  Maybe  we  shall  not  again  see 
the  flowers  that  intoxicate  and  the  eyes  that 
slay."  Any  student  of  Anatole  France  will 
realise  that  in  1885  the  author  was  already 
expressing  what  he  would  state  more  fully  in 
1914  in  The  Revolt  of  the  Angels — namely,  his 
fear  and  hatred  of  ascetic,  beauty- hating, 
death- desirous  Christianity. 

And  there  is  more :  forgive  me  if  I  paint 
the  lily  a  little,  but  others  have  painted  it  and 
in  colours  which  displease  me.  The  alleged 
reactionary  of  The  Gods  are  Athirst,  the  man 
who  was  supposed  to  have  gone  back  in 
1914  upon  the  humanitarian  and  republican 
sentiments  of  the  Dreyfus  period,  that  man 
was,  in  1882,  in  Les  Desirs  de  Jean  Servien 
22 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


(a  thoroughly  second-rate  novelette),  paint- 
ing an  absurd  revolutionary.  The  Commune 
reigns ;  he  shows  the  hero  the  people  rioting 
in  the  Luxembourg  Gardens,  and  says: 
"  M.  Servien,  look  upon  this  scene  and  never 
forget  it :  here  is  a  free  people.  Indeed  the 
citizens  were  walking  upon  the  grass,  plucking 
flowers  in  the  beds,  and  breaking  off  the 
branches  of  the  trees"  Anatole  France  had  in 
those  days  few  illusions  as  to  the  behaviour 
of  free  peoples !  And  again  in  the  short 
stories  which  make  up  Mother  of  Pearl  (1892) 
one  is  oppressed  by  Anatole  France's  hatred 
of  the  revolutionaries,  their  brute  ignorance, 
vanity,  stupidity,  their  mean  revengefulness, 
and  their  silly  imitation  of  Roman  attitudes. 
Anatole  France  is  what  he  was,  and  if 
he  seems  to  have  changed  now  and  then,  or 
to  have  been  inconsistent,  it  is  because  he 
is  a  developed  human  being,  a  rare  bird. 
He  has  not  cut  out  his  views  as  with  a 
stencil;  they  are  fluid,  they  overlap,  and 
he  can  hold  simultaneously  two  entirely 
divergent  views.  I  submit  that  any  man  of 
23 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

high  intellectual  development  tends  to  hold 
two  views  upon  one  topic.  One  view  is  that 
of  his  instinct,  the  other  is  that  of  his  reason. 
In  the  case  of  Anatole  France  the  instinct 
is  always  hedonistic ;  he  is  a  pagan ;  he 
loves  Greece,  Rome,  the  Middle  Ages,  and 
even  the  Catholic  Church,  for  their  beauty ; 
he  is  fond  of  all  the  good  things  of  the 
world,  beautiful  women,  flowers,  sweet- 
meats ;  of  all  the  fine,  disdainful  aristocratic 
ideas  of  the  artists  and  the  philosophers. 
.  .  .  But  there  is  what  may  be  called  his 
social  conscience,  which  is  utilitarian  and 
Socialistic.  That  conscience  tells  him  that 
however  much  beauty  he  may  extract 
from  it,  this  world,  filled  with  wars,  with 
cruelties,  with  factories,  with  ugly  houses 
and  ugly  clothes,  with  mean  prejudices, 
is  a  world  for  which  he  is  responsible 
because  he  is  a  man.  The  dream  of  that 
ugly  world  will  not  let  him  sleep  easily  upon 
his  rose- decked  couch.  There  is  the  conflict 
which  has  puzzled  so  many  of  his  readers ; 
sometimes  an  Epicurean,  at  other  times  a 
24 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


sort  of  Lloyd  Georgeite  is  apparent.  This 
does  not  mean  that  Anatole  France  is  throw- 
ing over  any  ideas ;  he  is  merely  being  more 
or  less  influenced  by  one  side  of  his  own  self. 
His  love  of  humanity  has  always  made  it 
difficult  for  him  to  enjoy  the  fruit  he  raised 
to  his  mouth  if  it  occurred  to  him  just  then 
that  other  mouths  might  go  hungry. 


n 

SATIRIST  AND  CRITIC 

IF  Anatole  France  is  to  be  remembered — 
that  is,  for  a  while,  which  is  perhaps  all 
a  man  can  hope — it  will  be  as  a  critic 
and  as  a  satirist.  Whether  he  will  be  re- 
membered longer  than  his  contemporaries, 
Tolstoy  or  Mr  Shaw,  I  do  not  know. 
Though  he  has  delighted  us,  the  race  of 
delights  is  short  and  pleasures  have  mutable 
faces;  he  may  share  the  fate  of  Flaubert, 
who  is  menaced ;  of  de  Maupassant,  who  is 
going;  or  of  Schiller,  forgotten;  of  Walter 
Scott,  reduced  to  a  juvenile  circulation ;  of 
Thackeray,  staking  all  upon  one  novel; 
of  Dickens,  surviving  by  the  picturesque ;  of 
Tolstoy,  convicted  as  a  moralist ;  of  Greeks 
uneasily  staggering  under  the  burden  of 
illogical  murder  and  absurd  incest  ...  I 
do  not  think  that  he  will  join  the  glorious 
band:  Homer,  Shakespeare,  Moliere.  For 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


Anatole  France  has  understood  all  things, 
but  mainly  in  their  details.  He  has  made 
a  mosaic,  not  a  marble  court;  seated  on 
Olympus,  his  eyes  have  been  too  keen, 
and  he  has  seen  men  too  clearly,  man  not 
enough.  But  still  he  is,  I  suppose,  assured 
of  his  line  in  any  biographical  dictionary 
that  may  be  printed  in  the  year  3000,  and 
that  is  a  good  deal.  I  like  to  think  of  that 
entry  in  the  Cydopcedia  of  Literature  (pub- 
lished by  the  International  Government 
Press ;  price,  seven  days  labour  bonds,  net). 
It  runs  something  like  this : 

FRANCE  (Anatole).  Pen-name  of  Jacques 
Anatole  Thibault.  French  writer,  b.  1844. 
d.  .  Satirist  and  critic.  Some  of  his 
work  has  merit  as  reflecting  the  faintly 
enlightened  views  of  an  observer  living  in 
barbarous  times. 

Anatole  France  is  the  only  living  satirist. 
He  has  actually  no  rivals ;  there  are  men 
such  as  Messrs  Max  Beerbohm,  Hansi, 
Mirbeau,  Hector  Munro,  F.  P.  Dunne,  who 

27 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

have  a  glimmering  of  what  satire  means; 
Mr  Wells  would  have  more  than  a  glimmer- 
ing if,  unfortunately,  he  did  not  hold  deep 
convictions  about  right  and  wrong,  a  weak- 
ness to  which,  in  spite  of  all  appearances, 
Mr  Shaw  also  succumbs;  but  Anatole 
France  alone  upholds  the  ancient  tradition 
of  Voltaire,  of  Defoe  and  Swift.  His  satire 
is  always  effective  because  it  is  always 
light,  always  pointed  and  always  smiling. 
He  has  none  of  the  bitterness  of  Swift  and 
therefore  he  is  the  truer  cynic,  for  true 
cynicism  is  not  fierce ;  it  is  always  genial. 
He  never  labours  a  point;  he  states,  pre- 
sents the  contrasts  between,  for  instance, 
what  a  rich  man  may  do  as  opposed  to  a 
poor  one,  and  then  passes  on,  laughing, 
Pan- like  dancing,  with  perhaps  a  tear  or 
two  in  his  laughter. 

Though  almost  every  book  he  has  written 
is  satirical  in  intent,  or  at  least  in  in- 
cident, five  volumes  are  satire  pure  and 
simple;  as  I  have  no  space  to  analyse  all 
his  works,  these  five  representatives  must 
28 


ANATOLE  FKANCE 


expound  him.  They  are  Penguin  Island 
and  the  four  volumes  of  Contemporary 
History  (The  Elm  Tree  on  the  Matt,  The 
WickerworTc  Woman,  VAnneau  d'Amethyste, 
Monsieur  Bergeret  a  Paris).  They  overlap 
a  little,  but  the  spirit  which  informs  them 
is  different.  Penguin  Island  is  broad, 
applicable  to  the  whole  history  of  man,  while 
the  other  four  volumes  cover  rather  the 
modern  irregularities  of  the  French  State. 
For  this  reason,  Penguin  Island  is  a  bigger 
and  a  finer  thing ;  indeed  it  is  probably  the 
biggest  thing  Anatole  France  has  done, 
because,  dealing  as  it  does  with  the  earliest 
superstitions  of  man,  his  faith  in  gods  and 
in  God,  with  the  rise  of  feudalism,  the  roots 
of  democracy,  war,  the  birth  of  art,  the 
action  and  reaction  of  parties,  it  has  a  sweep 
so  large  that  it  envelops  even  ages  now  in 
the  womb  of  time.  It  is  a  terrible  book, 
not  so  much  because  it  is  the  thinly  veiled 
history  of  the  French  people — that  is  to  say, 
the  story  of  follies,  miseries  and  crimes  (the 
story  of  any  other  imperial  people) — but 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

because  at  the  end  Anatole  France  reaches 
forth  into  the  future.  And  what  he  sees  is 
a  development  of  capitalism  by  the  side  of 
which  modern  capitalism  is  as  a  puling  child ; 
he  summarises  in  a  phrase  a  period  of  greater 
New  York:  "the  houses  were  never  high 
enough."  He  sees  the  masses  rising,  revolu- 
tion, the  break-up  of  the  social  system,  the 
return  of  pastoralism,  man  once  more 
nomadic  .  .  .  towns  forming  .  .  .  another 
aristocracy  .  .  .  Parliaments  .  .  .  industry 
and  capitalism  fastening  upon  the  world,  and 
again  the  houses  never  high  enough.  .  .  . 
That  is  a  vision  of  horror,  of  a  world  un- 
changing, unchangeable,  of  man  as  a  dog  ever 
returning  to  his  own  vomit.  I  should  like 
to  pursue  the  dream  further,  to  the  death 
of  the  sun,  when  the  earth  shall  grow 
cold  and  a  terrible  term  be  brought  to  the 
stupidity  of  man ;  he  shall  once  more  be  a 
fearful  brute  hiding  in  a  cave,  until  at  last, 
upon  his  cold  and  dying  globe,  among 
settling  mists,  he  shall  yield  up  the  last  spark 
of  a  misused  life.  .  .  . 
30 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


Anatole  France  is  certainly  wrong,  for  no 
barbarism  which,  the  world  has  ever  known 
ever  was  so  barbarous  as  the  barbarism 
that  went  before.  If  the  life  of  man  de- 
scribes a  curve,  this  is  not  a  circle ;  he  does 
not  interminably  return  to  the  same  point ; 
rather  the  curve  is  a  cycloid,  ever  bending 
back  upon  itself  and  yet  slowly  moving  on- 
wards towards  the  unknown  goal.  Anatole 
France  does  not,  I  think,  quite  deny  that, 
but  he  is  not  over- fond  of  what  he  calls  idle 
speculation:  where  his  knowledge  stops  he 
is  inclined  to  say :  "  After  all,  what  does  it 
matter  to  Sirius  ?  " 

The  island  where  the  penguins  lived  was 
evangelised  by  St  Mael,  who  quite  naively 
relates  how  he  navigated  to  its  shores  in  a 
stone  trough.  God  served  him  as  rudder 
and  sail.  It  would  have  been  all  right  if  the 
saint  had  not  been  short-sighted,  but  he  took 
the  penguins  for  men  and  baptized  them, 
which  gave  rise  to  great  trouble  in  heaven 
and  a  wonderful  ecclesiastical  debate.  For 
St  Patrick  said  that  baptism  could  not 
31 


WRITEKS  OF  THE  DAY 

avail  birds ;  St  Damasius  said  it  could,  for 
Mael  was  competent;  St  Guenole  said  it 
could  not,  because  penguins  were  not  con- 
ceived in  sin ;  St  Augustine  thought  it  could 
if  given  in  proper  form.  This  caused  much 
ill  feeling  in  Paradise;  Tertullian  grew 
quite  vicious  and  said  he  was  sorry  that 
the  penguins  had  no  soul,  as  thus  they 
could  not  go  to  hell.  The  intervention  of 
the  Almighty  was  hailed  with  unanimous 
cheers,  which  St  Augustine  backed  up  by 
begging  Him  not  to  give  the  penguins  a 
soul  because,  as  they  could  not  keep  the 
law,  they  would  burn  in  hell  "  in  virtue  of 
God's  adorable  decrees."  Upon  this  the 
disturbance  turned  to  scandal,  and  to  end 
it  the  penguins  were  turned  into  men. 

Then  the  troubles  of  the  once  happy  birds 
began.  They  were  clad  and  modesty  was 
born.  Property  arose,  and  murder.  The 
Catholic  Devil  had  a  hand  in  this  and  re- 
marked that  the  murderers  were  creating 
rights,  constituting  property,  laying  the 
bases  of  civilisation,  of  society  and  the  State. 
32 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


He  added  that  the  source  of  property  is 
force.  Later  a  state  formed  and  the  poor 
only  were  taxed  because  they  could  not 
resist,  and  because  there  were  more  of  them. 
A  freebooter  arose :  he  became  a  king.  His 
armies  went  to  war  and  were  beloved,  for 
they  won.  Art  appeared;  Margaritone 
foresaw  the  decadence  of  ecclesiastical  art 
and,  in  a  horrid  dream,  something  like  post- 
impressionism.  The  priest,  Marbode,  visited 
Virgil  in  hell ;  the  Latin  poet  remarked  that 
Dante  was  rather  a  bore  and  that  Christ  was 
the  god  of  barbarism.  Then  history  unrolls. 
There  is  a  revolution  (obviously  1789) ; 
Trinco  (Napoleon)  appears  and  a  loyal  pen- 
guin states  that  glory  cannot  cost  too  much. 
Modern  times  give  Anatole  France  a  yet 
greater  chance,  for.  he  takes  us  to  New 
Atlantis  (America),  where  commercial  wars 
are  executed  on  contract,  because  a  business 
people  must  have  a  policy  of  conquest ;  the 
European  War  of  1914,  if  one  dives  deep 
under  the  crust  of  patriotism,  sounds  very 
like  the  war  of  New  Atlantis  against  Third 
c  33 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

Zealand  "where  they  killed  two- thirds  of 
the  inhabitants  to  compel  the  remaining 
third  to  buy  from  New  Atlantis  umbrellas 
and  braces."  Plutocracy.  Socialism.  Royalist 
agitations,  supported  by  the  leaders  of  the 
army,  the  wineshops,  the  newsboys,  the 
police  and  the  courtesans.  All  through  this 
section  runs  the  Pyrot  case.  A  traitor 
(Dreyfus)  sold  ninety  thousand  bundles  of 
hay  to  the  foreigner — that  is  to  say,  he  did 
not  sell  them,  for  they  did  not  exist.  Yet 
General  Panther  says :  "  Evidently  Pyrot 
stole  them,  so  all  we  have  to  do  is  to  prove 
it."  To  which  another  General  replies: 
"  Arrest  Pyrot.  Find  some  evidence ;  the 
law  demands  it." 

Then  the  agitation,  difficult  because  the 
people  like  to  believe  in  guilt  and  are  too 
stupid  to  doubt.  Still  no  evidence,  and 
evidence  manufactured.  Here  Anatole 
France  puts  into  the  General's  mouth 
beautiful  phrases:  "Don't  have  evidence; 
it  makes  the  case  less  clear"  ;  and:  "  It  may 
be  better  to  have  no  evidence,  but  still  if 
34 


ANATOLE  FKANCE 


you  must  have  some,  trumped-up  evidence  is 
better  than  the  truth,  for  it  is  made  to  order." 
And  so  on  through  popular  agitations, 
Royalist  manoeuvres,  Boulangism,  the 
renaissance  of  Catholicism  (supported  by 
Jewish  money),  political  adultery,  the  rule 
of  gold,  until  we  come  to  the  time  when 
houses  are  never  high  enough.  .  .  . 

This  is  not  the  satire  of  Englishmen.  It 
has  not  the  truculence  of  Defoe's  A  Short 
Way  with  Dissenters ;  nor  does  it  state  the 
author's  view  as  does  any  one  of  Mr  Shaw's 
plays ;  nor  is  it  so  veiled  as  Gulliver's  Travels. 
All  this  is  together  elusive  and  obvious ;  it 
aims  at  showing  the  reader  what  lies  under 
history,  man  in  the  soldier's  coat,  his  mean- 
ness, his  greed,  his  lust  for  power,  and  the 
horrible,  crusted  stupidity  to  which  alone 
are  traceable  his  crimes. 

I  should  not  advise  any  Englishman  who 
is  not  conversant  with  French  history  to 
read  Penguin  Island,  but  I  should  not  advise 
any  Englishman  at  all  to  read  the  four 
volumes  of  Contemporary  History  unless  he 
35 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

has  lived  in  France  for  the  last  fifteen  years 
and  mixed  in  every  kind  of  French  society. 
He  will  find  in  those  books  droll  stories,  and 
droll  incidents ;  he  will  see  that  the  author 
is  getting  at  something,  but  that  is  all.  For 
those  volumes  do  not  deal  with  the  big  outer 
movements  which  one  can  watch  from  the 
columns  of  The  Times.  They  are  concerned 
with  the  mysteries  inside  French  politics, 
paralleled  here  by  the  "  Confederates,"  the 
Marconi  case,  the  theft  of  the  crown  jewels 
at  Dublin,  the  secret  history  of  the  rebellion 
of  the  officers  at  the  Curragh.  No  French- 
man would  understand  a  book  dealing  with 
those  things,  so  it  is  too  much  to  expect  an 
Englishman  to  understand  Contemporary 
History.  The  circumstances  that  led  to  the 
writing  of  these  books  are  simple  enough. 
The  Dreyfus  case  was  used  as  a  platform  for 
clerical,  Royalist  and  militarist  agitation. 
The  Government  set  to  work  to  .break  the 
Church  and  broke  it  (after  which  the  Church 
mended  itself  and  became  stronger  than 
ever) ;  the  Nationalist  revival  took  place,  and 
36 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


since  that  time  there  has  been  much  manoeuv- 
ring, some  intended  to  restore  the  Bourbons 
and  quite  ridiculous,  some  of  it  designed  to 
gain  well-paid  posts  for  reactionaries,  and 
that  one  much  in  earnest.  The  interesting 
parts  of  the  four  books  are  the  commen- 
taries of  M.  Bergeret,  a  university  professor 
in  a  little  town,  who,  I  need  hardly  say,  is  (just 
like  Sylvestre  Bonnard,  Coignard,  Trublet, 
Brotteaux)  Anatole  France  himself.  The 
four  books,  published  between  1897  and  1901, 
more  or  less  cover  that  period.  In  The  Elm 
Tree  on  the  Mall  unfolds,  with  local  politics, 
the  life  of  Bergeret,  married  to  a  shrew,  un- 
loved of  his  daughters,  disliked  by  most 
people  because  he  thinks  for  himself,  which 
amounts  to  saying  that  he  does  not  think 
like  anybody  else.  Round  him  eddy  repre- 
sentative characters,  the  Abbe  Guitrel,  who 
wants  to  be  a  bishop  and  is  proceeding  to- 
wards the  episcopate  half  by  apostolic  man- 
suetude,  half  by  way  of  Ignatius  of  Loyola ; 
Worms- Clavelin,  the  prefet  (chief  of  the  local 
executive),  who  is  a  Jew,  a  Freemason,  a 
37 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

Conservative  Catholic,  an  advanced  Re- 
publican, a  Socialist,  a  Royalist  and  a  few 
other  things  necessary  to  the  maintenance 
of  his  post ;  his  wife  is  friendly  to  Guitrel 
because  the  Abbe  makes  her  feel  French  (she 
was  born  Noemi  Coblenz)  and  because  she 
"  likes  »to  protect  one  of  those  tonsured 
heads  charged  for  eighteen  centuries  with 
the  excommunication  and  extermination  of 
the  circumcised."  There  is  General  de  Chal- 
mot,  a  soldier,  who  thinks  that  if  you 
destroy  belief  you  ruin  the  military  spirit, 
because  you  take  away  the  hope  of  another 
life;  there  is  Paillot's  bookshop  where 
Bergeret  meets  the  county,  the  lawyers,  the 
doctors,  to  talk  of  books,  politics,  actresses 
and  their  figures.  .  .  . 

Nothing  in  particular  happens.  Guitrel' s 
bishopric  is  the  leading  string  of  the  action ; 
there  is  Madame  Worms- Clavelin  helping 
Guitrel,  who  finds  her,  at  bargain  prices, 
chasubles  with  which  she  covers  her  arm- 
chairs; there  is  a  young  girl,  Claudine 
Deniseau,  who,  inspired  by  St  Radegunde, 
38 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


becomes  a  prophetess,  indulges  in  healing, 
predicts  frost  and  the  return  of  the  king; 
there  is  Worms- Clavelin,  trying  to  keep  the 
prophetess  quiet,  because  so  ancient  a  person 
as  St  Radegunde  ought  really  not  to  cause  a 
row  in  a  country  town.  An  old  lady  of 
eighty  is  murdered  by  her  boy- lover,  which 
causes  Bergeret  to  remark  that  murder  is 
quite  natural  and  fortunate,  for  without  evil 
one  could  not  see  beauty.  Worms- Clavelin 
kisses  Madame  de  Gromance  on  the  shoulder, 
(a  local  custom) ;  a  senator  promotes 
shady  companies  while  his  wife  embroiders 
altar-cloths;  and  somehow  the  story  ends 
with  Guitrel  very  much  out  of  the  running 
for  the  episcopal  stakes. 

What  matters  in  the  book  is  Bergeret, 
sitting  under  the  elm- tree  on  the  Mall,  or 
in  the  bookshop,  thinking,  talking,  smiling 
at  the  comedy.  Notable  are  his  talks  with 
Lantaigne,  another  candidate  for  the  bishop- 
ric, and  the  type  of  the  intellectual  priest. 
Anatole  France  may  detest  the  Catholic 
attitude,  but  he  understands  it  admirably, 
39 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

and  when  Lantaigne  contends  that  one  can 
have  two  opinions,  one  conscious  and 
rationalistic,  the  other  intuitive  and  theo- 
logical, he  makes  a  very  fine  case.  For  him, 
in  the  case  of  Joshua,  celestial  astronomy  is 
not  the  astronomy  of  man,  and  in  celestial 
mathematics,  3+3  may  make  nine,  because 
we  do  not  know  all  the  properties  of  numbers. 
At  other  times  Bergeret,  who  talks  to 
anybody,  tells  the  melancholic  story  of 
Napoleon  III.,  who  never  managed  to  grant 
his  foster-brother  a  small  post  in  the  civil 
service :  "  The  Emperor  was  a  charming 
fellow  but,  alas,  he  had  no  influence."  And 
so  the  book  wanders  on  with  the  opinions 
of  Bergeret,  happy,  like  ^sop,  in  the 
freedom  of  his  mind,  in  spite  of  the  narrow- 
ness of  his  home,  conscious  that  the  State 
is  honoured  so  long  as  it  taxes  the  poor,  and 
that  the  republic  is  easiest  to  live  under 
because  it  does  not  govern  much,  that  re- 
volutions help  none  save  the  flourishing  and 
the  ambitious.  It  would  all  be  profoundly 
pessimistic  if  it  were  not  always  genial 
40 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


One  feels  sure  that  if  Bergeret  had  an 
agreeable  wife,  a  good  cook,  and  a  volume 
of  Lucretius  (Oh,  Omar !),  he  would  let  the 
State  do  just  what  it  liked. 

The  story  continues  in  The  WickerworJc 
Woman,  with  Bergeret  working  up  his 
lecture  in  the  worst  room  in  his  flat,  where 
stands  the  wickerwork  figure  used  for  dress- 
making, symbolic  of  his  unpleasant  wife. 
He  grumbles,  and  then  considers  the  Romans. 
"  They  were  not  heroes,  they  preferred 
making  roads,  they  only  made  war  for 
business  reasons."  He  thinks  of  soldiers 
and  wonders  whether  the  sergeant  has  a 
right  to  tell  a  conscript  that  his  mother  is  a 
sow :  he  decides  that  the  sergeant  has  this 
right,  for  without  it  there  can  be  no  hierarchy 
or  discipline.  Then  the  cook  gives  notice, 
and  Guitrel  goes  to  Paris  while  Bergeret 
talks  to  a  tramp  who  says  that  when  he  was 
young  he  lost  his  pride  because  people  made 
fun  of  him.  .  .  . 

The  town  is  greatly  upset  because  the 
prophetess  cannot  give  the  logarithm  of 
41 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

nine.  (Another  case  of  celestial  mathe- 
matics ?)  Madame  de  Gromance  passes,  and 
Bergeret  reflects  that  to  see  a  pretty  woman 
is  a  stroke  of  luck  for  an  honest  man.  He  is 
"  grateful  to  her  for  dressing  with  art  and 
discretion."  But  tragedy  invades  the 
Bergeret  household,  for  Roux,  a  pupil, 
becomes  the  lover  of  Madame  Bergeret  .  .  . 
in  circumstances  which  make  it  impossible 
for  the  professor  to  doubt  his  eyes.  After 
a  murderous  moment  Bergeret  decides  that 
this  is  all  really  very  trifling,  throws  the 
wickerwork  figure  through  the  window,  and 
goes  out  to  talk  to  Paillot,  the  book- 
seller; he  reflects  vaguely  on  adultery  and 
its  meaninglessness.  Guitrel  and  the  arch- 
deacon hold  an  earnest  discussion  on 
omelettes.  Inspired  by  Marcus  Aurelius, 
Bergeret  concludes  that  the  art  of  life 
is  a  benevolent  contempt  for  man:  all 
Anatole  France  is  the"re.  For  him  those 
lovers  were  chimpanzees,  and  he  feels  a 
little  superior  because  he  is  "a  meditative 
chimpanzee." 

42 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


The  conversations  continue  to  develop. 
Fremont,  inspector  of  fine  arts,  is  "  patriotic, 
even  in  art"  ;  Worms- Clavelin  states  that 
he  loathes  the  Empire,  but  adds :  "  Still 
we  make  wine,  grow  corn,  as  under  the  em- 
peror ...  we  work  on  the  Stock  Exchange, 
eat,  drink,  make  love  as  under  the  emperor." 
The  upshot  is :  "  Don't  touch  the  machine, 
for  it  will  be  all  the  same  whatever  you  do." 

The  execution  of  the  murderer  of  the  old 
lady  enables  Bergeret  to  state  his  views, 
which  are,  as  usual,  exceedingly  unpopular, 
for  he  will  not  have  it  that  the  murderer  was 
a  degenerate :  had  not  Mithridates  a  double 
row  of  teeth  ?  Nor  shall  tattooing  prove  the 
crime,  for  are  not  fashionable  travellers 
tattooed  ?  And  then  he  wanders  off  on  the 
fiction  of  the  aristocratic  type  in  woman, 
which  is  entirely  derived  from  the  smart 
shopgirl  and  the  plebeian  actress.  The 
shady  senator  is  arrested,  but  released,  says 
his  wife,  owing  to  the  intervention  of  the 
Almighty.  Meanwhile  Bergeret  refuses  to 
speak  to  his  unfaithful  wife,  which  causes 
43 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

great  trouble  in  the  house,  because  the  cook, 
disliking  the  goings-on,  gives  notice  again ; 
the  new  cook  can  make  only  one  kind  of 
soup,  which  is  very  annoying.  And  so  the 
book  rambles  on  until  Madame  Bergeret, 
unable  to  bear  dumb  disdain,  leaves  with  her 
two  daughters. 

Before  leaving  she  has  disgraced  herself 
again  with  Lacarelle,  "  the  Gaul,"  who  only 
made  love  to  her  because  his  moustache  was 
so  long  that  this  was  expected  of  him.  The 
Dreyfus  case  is  beginning  to  bubble,  and 
Guitrel,  friendly  to  the  prefet,  finds  it  diffi- 
cult to  defend  the  Jews,  except  "  the  con- 
verted ones  who  have  done  a  lot  for  the 
Church  by  their  wealth."  Long  story  of 
Saint  Austregisile,  and  of  the  Virgin's 
miraculous  foot.  Honorine,  the  visionary, 
has  a  miraculous  trance,  and  then  retires  into 
a  bush  to  make  love  to  a  tramp.  Fat  and 
beautiful  Madame  de  Bonmont  entertains 
Guitrel.  History  of  the  rise  of  this  county 
family,  late  Nathan,  and  of  Madame  de 
Bonmont' s  love-making  with  Raoul,  duellist 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


and  gambler,  illustrious  because  he  fought  a 
Jew  who  had  in  a  cafe  asked  for  the  Army 
List  and  thereby  outraged  the  French  flag. 
As  the  agitation  progresses,  the  loyal  popu- 
lace sacks  the  shop  of  Meyer,  the  bootmaker, 
and  retires,  having  struck  a  good  blow  for 
their  country.  In  these  days  Bergeret  is 
happy,  talking  to  Riquet,  his  dog,  "  a  religi- 
ous beast,"  thinking  and  talking  of  Hercules, 
whom  he  looks  upon  as  a  sort  of  boxer  at  a 
fair,  and  of  the  history  of  Spain.  .  .  . 

Little  boys  pass,  shouting :  "  Down  with 
Zola! 

Bergeret  is  a  Dreyfusist.  It  does  not 
make  him  any  more  popular  than  he  became 
when  he  said  that  Joan  of  Arc  was  only  a 
military  mascot.  Bergeret  wistfully  begins 
to  desire  Madame  de  Gromance,  but  knows 
that  he  has  no  chance ;  so  he  returns  to  his 
thoughts  and  to  the  all- pervading  Dreyfus 
case,  realising  that  the  crowd  cannot  reason, 
that  "  it  holds  with  established  error." 
Young  de  Bonmont  meanwhile  sends  his 
beautiful  mother  to  see  a  most  glad- eyed 
45 


WKITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

Cabinet  minister  who  has  power  to  make 
Guitrel  a  bishop,  because  if  Guitrel  is  made 
a  bishop  he  can  induce  the  local  duke  to 
invite  young  de  Bonmont  to  the  hunt.  One 
is  sorry  for  Madame  de  Bonmont,  so  fat 
and  so  innocent,  but  one  does  not  feel  sorry 
when  young  Dellion,  who  is  for  the  time 
being  favoured  of  Madame  de  Gromance, 
enlists  her  influence  on  the  side  of  Guitrel, 
and  while  she  is  putting  on  her  stays  dis- 
cusses the  future  of  the  bishopric.  The 
talk  veers  to  fashions,  and  while  she  attaches 
her  suspenders  Madame  de  Gromance  argues 
whether  his  mother,  Madame  Dellion,  was 
truly  virtuous.  Meanwhile  Madame  Worms- 
Clavelin,  also  supporting  Guitrel,  makes — 
well,  let  us  say,  great  concessions  to  the 
secretary  of  the  Cabinet  minister,  in  the  cause 
of  chasubles  at  bargain  prices  and  of  good 
government.  .  .  . 

Bergeret  continues  to  attack  most  things : 

antisemitism,  because  he  is  not  big  enough  to 

hate  ninety  thousand  people;    nationality, 

because  there  is  no  such  thing,   for  the 

46 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


alleged  French  are  only  Gauls,  Iberians, 
Celts,  Romans,  Franks  and  Saracens. 
Guitrel,  made  a  bishop,  is  broken  for  attack- 
ing the  Government,  while  poor  Madame  de 
Bonmont  leaves  her  amethyst  ring  on 
Raoul's  bedroom  mantelpiece. 

In  the  last  volume,  Bergeret,  now  a  pro- 
fessor in  Paris,  reflects  on  the  quality  of  meat, 
the  soul  of  dogs,  and  the  essence  of  heroism. 
Panneton  de  la  Barge  delivers  a  passion- 
ate speech  on  the  army  which  is  "  the  con- 
solation of  the  present  and  the  hope  of  the 
future,"  and  ends  by  enlisting  Bergeret' s 
influence  to  get  his  son  out  of  two  years' 
military  service.  Madame  de  Bonmont  has 
now  fallen  into  the  arms  of  Lacrisse,  secre- 
tary of  the  Royalist  group,  for  she  wishes  to 
save  France.  Lacrisse' s  chief  occupation  is 
to  coach  generals  in  evidence  to  be  used  at 
the  Dreyfus  trial.  Conspiracy.  A  letter 
from  the  Pretender ;  great  sensation  which 
leads  to  the  conquest  of  Lacrisse,  for  Madame 
de  Bonmont  gives  him  "  a  historic  embrace." 
He  then  compels  her  reluctantly  to  subscribe 
47 


WKITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

to  the  funds.  Royalist  fete.  And  Panneton 
begins  to  cook  the  local  elections  with  the 
help  of  Madame  de  Gromance:  he  finds 
that  the  one  place  where  they  can  talk  politics 
is  a  flat  furnished  with  a  graduated  series 
of  sofas. 

Meanwhile  Bergeret  indulges  in  charity  to 
a  beggar  called  Clopinel,  and  then  remarks : 
"  I  have  done  wrong,  I  have  given  alms  .  .  . 
I  have  tasted  the  shameful  joy  of  abasing 
my  fellow- man,  I  have  signed  the  odious 
pact  which  preserves  strength  for  the 
strong,  weakness  for  the  weak.  I  have 
sold  to  my  brother  fraternity  at  short 
weight.  ...  I  have  been  tempted.  Oh, 
seducer !  Oh  dangerous  Clopinel !  Delicious 
Clopinel.  .  .  ." 

Slump  in  Royalist  plots,  arrests.  Lacrisse 
stands  for  the  town  council  as  a  republican 
Liberal,  with  the  help  of  Father  Adeodat, 
who  will  let  him  be  a  republican  in  public 
if  only  he  will  be  a  true  man  in  committee. 
And  the  Contemporary  History  ends  at  a 
Royalist  dinner-party,  on  memories  of  a 
48 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


riot,  the  triumph  of  Mr  Loubet,  who 
triumphed  just  because  he  happened  to 
be  there ;  this  is  the  downfall  of  reac- 
tionary and  clerical  hopes,  but  Madame  de 
Gromance  gives  up  to  Dellion  her  hospitable 
heart.  .  .  . 

It  all  sounds  rather  cruel,  and  there  are 
touches,  such  as  Lacrisse  coaching  Generals 
in  the  evidence  they  will  deliver  against 
Dreyfus,  such  as  the  description  of  M.  de  la 
Barge  trying  to  get  his  son  out  of  military 
service  after  proclaiming  that  the  army  is 
the  ideal  of  his  soul,  which  provoke  in  the 
reader  just  what  Anatole  France  wants :  not 
laughter,  but  an  ironic,  lingering,  vinegary 
smile.  Time  after  time,  in  every  one  of  his 
books  he  obtains  this  effect ;  it  is  the  effect 
of  sharp  contrast,  of  suddenness ;  it  recalls 
a  page  of  Machiavelli  who,  after  describing 
how  an  Italian  tyrant  had  one  of  his  ministers 
sawn  in  half,  alive,  in  the  market-place,  goes 
on :  "  But  to  return  to  more  important 
things  .  .  ." 

That  produces  a  shock,  and  when 
D  49 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

applied  to  irony  this  is  an  effect  still  more 
powerful  than  when  it  is  applied  to  fiction, 
as,  for  instance,  in  Ambrose  Bierce's  An 
Occurrence  at  Owl  Creek  Bridge.  But  the 
irony  is  not  artificial :  it  is  the  sort  of  irony 
given  to  those  who  walk  the  world  with  their 
eyes  open.  It  inspires  the  feeling  of  amuse- 
ment which  invaded  a  few  of  us  during  the 
great  European  War,  when  we  read  in  the 
newspapers  articles  about  Russian  culture, 
and  remembered  what  the  same  newspapers 
used  to  say  about  the  Bear.  I  could  not 
help  smiling  at  our  attitude  to  the 
sausage- eaters  when  recalling  how  com- 
pletely we  had  forgotten  the  frog- eaters  and 
candle- eaters  of  times  gone  by.  Very  likely, 
though  the  war  roused  him  to  action  in 
defence  of  ancient  French  culture,  Anatole 
France  chuckled  over  the  intimate  friendship 
between  France  and  England,  which,  in  1898, 
at  the  time  of  Fashoda,  and  in  1899,  at  the 
time  of  the  Boer  War,  was  such  an  intimate 
hatred.  He  would  have  chuckled  still  more 
had  he  known  that  a  patriotic  English  inn- 
50 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


keeper  had  changed  the  name  of  his  tavern 
from  "  The  King  of  Prussia  "  to  "  The  Czar's 
Head."  For  history  has  staying  power,  and 
one  wonders  a  little  whether,  as  generations 
pass,  "  The  Czar's  Head  "  may  not  have  to 
turn  into  "  The  Roosevelt  Arms,"  "  The 
Garibaldi,"  or  perhaps  one  day  into  "  The 
Chung  Ling  Soo  ..." 

But  ironic  as  it  all  is,  it  is  very  living. 
This  should  strike  nobody  as  extraordinary, 
for  life  is  most  ironic:  it  would  be  quite 
intolerable  to  some  of  us  if  it  were  not. 
But  this  is  worth  saying  because  a  great 
many  other  satirists — Swift,  Rabelais,  Cer- 
vantes—  obtain  most  of  their  effects  by 
distortion.  Anatole  France  obtains  his  by 
bringing  out  the  essential  incongruity  of  life : 
funerals  passing  under  the  windows  of  the 
Ritz  where  there  is  a  smart  luncheon-party, 
sermons  bidding  us  love  our  enemies  while 
newsboys  shout  casualty  lists;  life  is  full 
of  it.  That  is  why  the  archdeacon  and 
another  cleric  hold,  in  the  midst  of  a  theo- 
logical crisis,  that  earnest  argument  about 
51 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

omelettes.  Life  and  people  are  like  that, 
and  there  is  nothing  at  all  distorted  in  the 
diplomatic,  furry,  soft-spoken  priests  who 
.  .  .  well,  let  us  say,  do  not  discourage  their 
fair  penitents  from  committing  adultery  with 
powerful  republicans,  provided  this  serves  a 
good  cause.  After  all  Judith  .  .  .  and  Jael, 
and  all  that.  And  it  does  not  seem  monstrous 
that  the  new  bishop  should  be  selected  while 
Madame  de  Gromance  does  up  her  sus- 
penders, for  it  is  quite  conceivable  that  lovers 
should  now  and  then,  at  intervals,  talk 
politics. 

And  he  is  fair.  He  is  not  fair  like  Byron, 
who  hated  most  people  and  disliked  the 
others,  but  because  he  can  see  oddity  and 
occasionally  beastliness  in  the  people  of 
whom  he  approves.  He  is  for  the  Jews  in 
this  Dreyfus  quarrel,  but  that  does  not  make 
him  anti- Christian;  he  is  as  impartial  in 
his  attacks  as  a  mosquito.  Indeed  a  great 
many  Jews  wish  they  had  been  saved  from 
their  friend,  for  pictures  such  as  that  of 
Madame  Worms- Clavelin  and  her  husband, 
52 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


of  Madame  de  Bonmont,  that  most  Christian 
of  Jewesses,  anxious  to  forget  the  tent  of 
hides,  remembering  in  the  most  sacred  (and 
even  most  amorous)  moments  that  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  a  Stock  Exchange,  are  not 
always  kind. 

But,  kind  or  unkind,  the  satire  is  never 
laid  on  thickly.  Not  once  does  Anatole 
France  suggest  that  Mademoiselle  Deniseau 
is  a  sham  prophetess :  no,  that  would  be 
clumsy;  she  merely  cannot  give  the 
logarithm  of  nine.  .  .  . 

In  those  four  books  modern  French  society 
stands  forth  quite  stark,  with  a  rather  de- 
cayed charm,  a  naivete  born  from  an  excess 
of  complexity.  Anatole  France  strips  it  of 
all  its  gewgaws,  patriotism,  faith,  morality : 
of  all  its  little  affectations ;  .  .  .  and  then, 
having  exposed  it,  he  consents  to  love  it 
because  his  satire  rests  on  his  philosophy. 
That  philosophy,  with  which  I  deal  further 
on,  is  enunciated  in  every  volume  by  the 
nice  old  gentlemen  who  embody  him, 
Bonnard,  Bergeret  and  the  others:  irony 
53 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

and  pity ;  despise  man  but  love  him,  see  his 
weakness  and  yet  hope;  he  may  not  be 
immortal,  yet  he  is  eternal,  indestructible  as 
all  matter ;  and  though  he  be  no  more  than 
a  mite  in  cheese  yet  he  is  the  expression  of 
life,  the  soul  of  beauty,  the  one  thing  in  the 
world  which  is  holy.  For  Anatole  France  is 
sweet  and  pitiful.  All  through  his  work  <  we 
feel  that,  and  in  none  so  much  as  in  a  little 
story,  Crainquebille.  This  is  the  simple  tale 
of  an  old  hawker  who  was  run  in  for  not 
moving  on,  just  because  he  was  waiting  for 
sixpence  owed  to  him  for  vegetables.  The 
policeman  trumped  up  against  him  a  charge 
of  having  shouted  "  Down  with  the  Peelers ! " 
When  he  comes  out  of  gaol  Crainquebille  is 
ostracised;  that  makes  him  quarrelsome; 
then,  having  no  friends,  he  drinks ;  becom- 
ing drunken,  he  loses  his  customers  and  sinks 
deeper  and  deeper  into  poverty.  And  the 
terrible  indictment  of  the  law  that  makes 
criminals  by  listening  to  the  strong  and 
flouting  the  poor,  ends  on  the  picture  of  old 
Crainquebille,  forlorn,  degraded  and  starving, 
54 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


going  up  to  a  policeman  and  shouting: 
"  Down  with  the  Peelers !"  so  as  to  get  a 
night's  lodging  in  the  cells.  But,  irony  of 
ironies,  this  policeman  shrugs  his  shoulders, 
and  walks  away. 

It  would  not  be  right  to  end  this  chapter 
without  saying  a  few  words  about  Anatole 
France  in  his  more  literal  role  of  critic.  He 
has  done  an  immense  amount  of  literary 
criticism  in  Le  Temps  and  in  scattered 
articles,  most  of  which  have  been  collected 
in  the  four  volumes  of  On  Life  and  Letters 
and  in  Le  Genie  Latin.  He  is  sympathetic 
and  kindly  in  the  extreme  when  dealing 
with  the  work  of  young  men,  particularly 
if  they  are  scholars,  if  they  are  interested  in 
the  things  he  loves,  medievalism,  sculpture, 
history,  etc.,  and  he  will  forgive  a  great  deal 
to  good  intentions,  but  when  he  does  not 
like  a  book  Anatole  France  is  a  terrible  re- 
viewer, so  terrible  a  reviewer  that  I  trust 
this  little  monograph  will  not  fall  into  his 
hands.  Ignoring  then  the  gentler  side  of 
him,  I  will  reproduce  two  extracts  from  his 
65 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

criticisms.  The  first  is  from  a  review  of 
Georges  Ohnet' s  book,  entitled  Will.  Mr 
Georges  Ohnet,  as  I  suppose  everybody 
knows,  has  for  a  long  time  enjoyed  great 
vogue  in  France  for,  have  no  illusions  about 
it,  the  French  are  no  more  literary  than  we 
are  and  have  a  passion  for  stories  of  moated 
granges,  immaculate  officers  (comparatively 
chaste),  remorseful  women  who  sacrifice  their 
beauty  for  the  ideal,  and  all  that  sort  of 
thing;  with  a  little  arrangement,  the 
sentimental- heroic  novels  of  Mrs  Barclay,  and 
the  senti  mental-  religious  novels  of  Mr  Hall 
Caine  would  have  in  France  a  good  circula- 
tion. In  fact,  the  sensuous  religiosity  of  Mr 
Hall  Caine  enjoys  in  France  quite  adequate 
popularity.  And  here  is  what  Anatole 
France  says  of  this  kind  of  novel,  Will,  as 
published  by  Mr  Georges  Ohnet: 

"  The  title  is  a  whole  philosophy.  Will, 
that  is  what  speaks  to  the  heart  and  mind. 
Will  by  Georges  Ohnet !  How  one  feels 
the  man  of  principle  who  has  never  doubted  ! 
Witt  by  Georges  Ohnet,  73rd  edition !  What 
56 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


a  proof  of  the  power  of  the  will !  Locke 
did  not  believe  that  the  world  was  free. 
But  his  Essay  on  the  Human  Understanding 
did  not  reach,  seventy- three  editions  in 
a  single  morning.  Here  we  have  Locke 
victoriously  refuted!  The  will  is  not  an 
illusion,  for  Mr  Georges  Ohnet  has  willed 
to  have  seventy- three  editions,  and  he  has 
achieved  them." 

Anatole  France,  after  this  amiable  be- 
ginning, remarks  that  Mr  Georges  Ohnet' s 
notions  are  displeasing,  that  his  style  is 
ungraceful ;  he  quotes  him,  and  the  result  is 
quite  ghastly.  And  he  ends  on  words  which 
rescue  the  reader  from  doubt : 

"  There  is  not  a  page,  not  a  line,  not  a 
word,  not  a  syllable  of  that  book  which  has 
not  shocked,  saddened,  and  offended  me.  I 
was  disposed  to  weep  over  it  with  all  the 
muses  for  company." 

Another  review,  that  of  Zola's  book,  The 
Dream,  I  cannot  resist  mentioning.  The 
book  is  not  very  well  known  in  England, 

57 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

which  is  a  pity,  as  it  might  please  the  wor- 
shippers of  the  latter-day  Swan  of  Avon. 
It  is  pure.  Anatole  France  is  aware  of  that, 
for  he  wickedly  heads  his  review :  "Mr 
Zola's  Purity."  As  it  certainly  was  not 
Zola's  habit  to  be  pure,  surprise  at  the 
accident  was  legitimate.  And  so  Anatole 
France  writes : 

"If  in  order  to  be  poetic,  graceful,  and 
touching,  it  were  enough  to  resolve,  Mr  Zola 
would  certainly  be  at  the  present  moment 
the  most  graceful,  the  most  poetic,  the  most 
winged,  and  the  most  uplifted  among 
novelists  ...  he  espouses  chastity  and  thus 
affords  us  the  most  edifying  example.  One 
can  only  regret  that  he  celebrates  this  mystic 


Anatole  France  analyses  the  tale  of  the 
beautiful  heroine,  in  her  saintly  cathedral 
town,  and  adds :  "  Zinc  factories  and  flat 
irons  occupy  too  much  space  in  Mr  Zola's 
soul."  He  then  convicts  Zola  of  gross  ignor- 
ance of  the  period  he  describes,  remarks 
68 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


casually:  "  Saint  Joseph's  lily  becomes  in 
his  hand  an  instrument  for  advertisement," 
and,  alluding  to  his  previous  works,  sums 
up:  "I  prefer  Mr  Zola  on  all  fours  to  Mr 
Zola  winged." 


Ill 

PHILOSOPHER  AND  THEOLOGIAN 

LIKE  many  agnostics,  Anatole  France 
is  more  interested  in  religion  than 
is  many  a  believer.  Like  those  old 
encyclopaedists  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
he  is  always  crushing  the  infamous  one, 
which  the  faithful  generally  support  because 
assured  that  the  so-called  infamous  one 
cannot  be  crushed.  And  that  infamous  one 
is  not  only  the  Catholic  religion  but  religion 
itself.  I  do  not  want  to  raise  an  argument 
as  to  what  is  religion :  in  the  sense  in  which 
Anatole  France  attacks  it  it  is  a  precise  faith 
in  some  creative  and  conscious  spirit  which 
manifests  itself,  not  only  in  this  world,  but 
in  some  conceptive  other  world.  Of  that 
Anatole  France  will  hear  nothing.  He  can 
do  without  it ;  he  is  strong  enough  to  stand 
alone,  and  to  meet  death  "  as  one  about  to 
seek  a  great  perhaps."  He  needs  no  prop, 
60 


ANATOLE  FKANCE 


and  he  would  smile  at  a  letter  I  received  a 
little  while  ago  from  a  devout  Catholic  who 
urged  me  to  draw  on  "  the  strength  and  con- 
solation which  streamed  from  that  little  hill 
near  Jerusalem,  two  thousand  years  ago,  and 
now  flows  from  the  slope  that  rises  by  the 
side  of  the  yellow  waters  of  the  Tiber." 
Anatole  France  sees  the  poetry  of  this  con- 
ception, but  though  he  sees  the  idea  as 
poetic  he  does  not  see  the  statement  as  true. 
For  him  religion  or  faith  is  cowardice ;  it 
is  the  cry  of  man  who  dares  not  die,  and  in 
every  one  of  his  books  he  has  used  the  most 
cunning  methods  to  express  his  feeling. 

One  of  the  most  notable  ways  has  been  to 
express  the  ideas  of  men  through  the  mouth 
of  Riquet,  the  dog.1  For  the  dog,  as  Anatole 
France  said  in  another  place,  is  a  religious 
beast,  and  here  are  some  of  the  thoughts 
which  pass  through  its  brain: 

"  My  master  warms  me  when  I  lie  behind 

1  In  Monsieur  Bergeret  d  Paris,  and  in  the  story 
entitled  Riquet. 

61 


WKITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

him  in  his  armchair ;  that  is  because  he  is 
a  god."  ("  The  Lord  wiU  provide.")  "  In 
my  master's  voice  are  many  vain  sounds. 
It  is  difficult  and  necessary  to  define  the 
thought  of  the  master."  (Catholic  exegesis 
of  the  Bible.)  "  I  love  my  master,  Bergeret, 
because  he  is  terrible  and  powerful." 
( Jewish  worship  of  Jehovah.)  And  the  little 
black  dog  prays: 

"  Oh,  my  master,  Bergeret,  God  of 
Slaughter,  I  worship  thee !  Hail,  oh  God 
of  wrath  !  Hail,  oh  bountiful  God  !  I  lie  at 
thy  feet,  I  lick  thy  hand.  Thou  art  great 
and  beautiful  when  at  the  laden  board  thou 
devourest  abundant  meats.  Thou  art  great 
and  beautiful  when,  from  a  thin  strip  of  wood 
causing  flame  to  spring,  thou  dost  of  night 
make  day.  ..." 

Here  indeed  in  the  old  professor  who  can 
whip  Eiquet  is  the  God  of  Sabaoth,  the  God 
of  Battles ;  in  the  professor  with  the  carving 
knife  is  He  who  multiplied  the  fishes  and  the 
loaves.  And  I  need  not  labour  that  when 
Bergeret  strikes  a  match  it  is  very  wonder- 
ful: so  was  Genesis  and  the  making  of  the 
sun.  .  .  . 

62 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


For  his  aggressive,  childish  superstitions, 
for  his  puerile  desire  to  find  an  unnatural 
explanation  to  what  he  does  not  under- 
stand, Anatole  France  might  despise  man, 
yet  he  loves  him.  He  finds  charm  in  hiero- 
phantic  absurdity ;  he  feels  the  poetry  of 
the  little  hill.  And  he  goes  further:  he 
feels  the  poetry  even  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
though  it  was  a  period  of  bestial  and  un- 
graceful ignorance,  raping  knights,  robber 
troubadours  and  fine  ladies  who  never 
changed  their  underclothing;  he  loves 
historic  truth  as  well  as  the  highfalutin  non- 
sense of  Amadis  of  Gaul.  For  Amadis  has  a 
picaresque  air.  In  his  book,  The  Well  of 
St  Clare  notably,  are  several  stories  sup- 
posed to  be  told  by  a  Siennese  priest.  There 
is  that  of  Saint  Satyr,  out  of  whose  tomb 
came  a  multitude  of  mists,  each  one  of 
which  was  a  woman.  They  floated  in  the 
darkling  air;  through  their  light  tunics 
shone  their  light  bodies.  The  clerics  had 
hunted  them  into  the  tomb  of  the  saint  who 
was  accepted  of  God  the  Christ,  because 
63 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

the  goat  worshipped  in  his  own  fashion. 
( Anatole  France  hints  that  all  religions  have 
the  same  root  and  that  one  worshipper  is  as 
good  as  another ;  he  has  written  another  story 
on  these  lines,  Amyous  and  Celestin.)  The 
tomb  is  opened  and  the  heart  of  the  priest 
who  saw  the  vision  is  in  most  mediaeval  style 
torn  out  by  the  ghosts  of  hags.  In  another 
story,  The  Security,  the  Virgin  stands  bail 
for  a  year  for  a  debt,  and  leads  the  merchant's 
barque  back  in  time  to  redeem  her,  because 
he  believed  in  her;  there  are  other  queer 
stories,  such  as  The  Lady  of  Verona,  who  so 
loved  her  body  that  she  begged  Satan  to 
save  it ;  such  as  The  Mystery  of  the  Blood, 
where  a  saint  cheers  a  criminal  whose  blood 
falls  upon  her  gown.  She  says :  "  Take  not 
from  me  my  purple  and  my  perfumes."  In 
all  these  stories  he  shows  how  charmed  he 
is  by  this  childish  medievalism.  And  yet 
he  does  not  espouse  it,  for  in  the  Opinions 
of  Jerome  Coignard  he  says:  "All  those 
stories  of  Satanic  fornication  are  disgusting 
dreams,  and  it  is  a  shame  that  Jesuits  and 
64 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


Dominicans  should  have  made  them  up  into 
treatises." 

His  theology  is  usually  intermingled  with 
his  philosophy.  In  the  story  called  Komm 
VAtrebate  (in  Clio)  the  warrior  believes  that 
the  same  moon  does  not  shine  over  Rome 
and  over  Gaul,  because  Rome  is  so  far  away ; 
in  La  Muiron  (in  Clio)  Buonaparte  expounds 
his  theory  of  government  by  faith :  "  The 
right  to  deny  God  is  granted  to  a  learned 
man  shut  up  in^  his  study,  not  to  a  leader  of 
peoples  whose  power  over  the  vulgar  rests 
upon  his  community  with  their  ideas.  To 
govern  men  one  must  think  like  them  on 
all  great  questions  and  allow  oneself  to  be 
carried  by  public  opinion." 

Anatole  France  wishes  to  govern  no  man, 
and  to  be  governed  of  no  man.  He  is  the 
most  anarchistic  of  Socialists.  And  how 
could  he  feel  otherwise  if  indeed  he  be 
Coignard,  who  "  despised  man  tenderly," 
who  thought  that  "  on  earth  one  cannot 
help  sinning "  ?  The  Abbe  Coignard,  in 
1893,  was  full  of  cynical  contempt  for 
E  65 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

democracy,  of  disbelief  in  the  importance 
of  forms  of  government,  and  in  the  value  of 
change;  yet  Coignard  hated  prisons  and 
armies;  he  thought  all  war  hateful,  ex- 
cept civil  war;  for  him  glory,  nobility, 
honour  were  words ;  glory,  notably,  was 
accident;  modesty  was  Calvinism;  he 
thought  that  there  was  a  pure  and  an 
impure,  but  heaven  alone  knew  which  was 
which.  ...  All  that  is  the  Francian  philo- 
sophy mixed  in  with  the  Francian  religion : 
doubts  and  smiles. 

But  now  and  then,  when  he  is  annoyed  by 
the  externals  of  Christianity,  Anatole  France 
becomes  more  militant.  He  has  written 
(in  Mother  of  Pearl)  a  story  entitled  The 
Procurator  of  Jud&a,  which  ranks  with  the 
finest  of  de  Maupassant's,  and  is  deeper  in 
intention  than  anything  de  Maupassant  ever 
wrote.  A  generation  after  the  Crucifixion, 
Pilate,  then  taking  the  waters  for  gout  in 
Northern  Italy,  meets  an  old  friend  who 
was  once  at  Jerusalem.  They  talk  of 
horses,  of  the  policy  of  Vitellius,  of  the 
66 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


waters,  of  the  things  that  would  interest 
Roman  gentlemen,  and,  little  by  little,  they 
come  to  talk  of  those  silly,  noisy,  obstinate 
Jews  who  used  to  raise  such  wrangles  and 
such  schisms  in  Jerusalem.  And  they  talk 
of  Mary  Magdalene,  in  her  pre- scriptural 
days :  "  By  the  light  of  a  smoky  little  lamp, 
on  a  wretched  carpet  she  danced,  raising 
her  arms  to  strike  the  cymbals.  Her  back 
arched,  her  head  thrown  back,  as  if  drawn 
down  by  the  heavy  weight  of  her  ruddy 
hair,  her  eyes  drowned  in  lust,  ardent  and 
languishing,  she  would  have  caused  Cleo- 
patra herself  to  blush  for  envy.  ..."  They 
sigh,  for  Magdalene  was  very  beautiful  and 
seductive  ( in  her  pre-  scriptural  days) .  Then 
the  friend  recalls  that  she  followed  "  a  young 
Galilean  thaumaturge  who  was  crucified," 
says  the  friend,  "  for  I  don't  know  what 
crime."  Pontius  Pilate  thinks  for  a  long 
time;  crucifixion  was  so  commonplace  in 
those  days.  After  a  while  he  says: 
"  Jesus  ?  Jesus  of  Nazareth  ?  No,  I  don't 
remember  him." 

67 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

I  know  that  many  who  read  this  will 
charge  Anatole  France  with  blasphemy. 
Well,  blasphemy  has  its  uses :  it  parts  the 
sheep  from  the  goats;  it  impresses  the 
waverers  and  drives  such  of  them  as  are 
weak  of  faith  into  agnosticism,  while  it 
shocks  the  faithful  and  strengthens  their 
militancy.  The  blasphemer  may  render  a 
service  to  the  faith.  Blasphemy  need  not 
be  ignorant;  indeed,  true  blasphemy  is 
possible  only  in  the  enlightened:  the  un- 
enlightened find  it  easier  to  believe;  it 
is  so  difficult  to  believe  when  one  does  not 
know.  Now  Anatole  France  does  not  know, 
and  he  is,  so  far  as  that  goes,  in  the  position 
of  St  Francis,  but  where  he  differs  from  St 
Francis  is  that  he  does  not  believe  that  which 
he  does  not  know.  ( I  am  assuming  that  St 
Francis  did  believe,  that  he  did  more  than 
want  to  believe.)  For  Anatole  France 
understands  perfectly  well  the  Catholic 
attitude  and  its  Christian  variations;  he 
has  a  full  understanding  of  it,  its  simplicity, 
gaiety,  charm,  of  its  tender  humanity,  of  the 
68 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


beautiful  Catholic  sympathy  with  the  weak- 
ness of  man,  with  the  feeble  hands  that  can- 
not seize  more  than  the  hem  of  the  seamless 
garment.  He  loves  this  Catholicism  which 
he  detests  because,  after  all,  while  spreading 
among  the  people  brute  ignorance,  infamous 
asceticism,  prejudices  and  an  intolerance 
resulting  in  a  cruelty  foreign  to  the  tiger,  it 
somehow,  through  the  Dark  Ages,  kept  burn- 
ing the  flame  of  the  arts.  The  Catholicism 
of  Anatole  France  is  that  of  Cimabue,  of 
Raphael,  of  Marot,  of  Shakespeare  (no 
Protestant  he),  the  Catholicism  of  those 
friars  who  pored  over  Greek  texts,  of  those 
inspired  workmen  who  painted  stained  glass, 
of  the  fine  ladies  with  the  pearl- braided  hair 
who,  with  hands  delicate  as  sprays  of  fern, 
embroidered  chasubles,  and,  all  of  them, 
interposed  a  bulwark  between  the  culture 
of  man  and  the  stinking  men-at-arms. 
That  Catholicism  is  the  Catholicism  of  song 
and  dance,  the  Catholicism  of  the  juggler 
and  the  troubadour,  not  only  the  Catholi- 
cism of  the  stake  but  the  Catholicism  of 
69 


WEITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

Merrie  England  before  Calvin  came  to  blow 
a  black  breath  upon  a  world  not  yet  made 
grey  by  the  Galilean.1 

It  might  be  concluded  that  Anatole  France 
is  an  atheist,  but  that  is  not  correct;  he 
has  said  too  definitely  that  though  man  may 
not  be  immortal,  he  is  eternal.  He  merely 
does  not  know  whence  we  came  nor  whither 
we  go,  nor  I  think  does  he  care  much ;  he  is 
merely  a  member  of  the  band,  Voltaire, 
Renan,  Huxley,  Spencer,  Darwin,  Haeckel 
(doubtful  that  one),  who  were  not  willing 
to  believe  without  understanding,  and  yet 
agreed  that  there  might  be  something  in 
which  to  believe  if  one  could  understand  it. 
Briefly,  he  is  an  agnostic.  He  refuses  to 
make  the  slightly  self-conscious  effort  which 
certain  literary  men,  in  England  and  in 
France,  successfully  make  to  accept  the 
spiritual  origin  of  miracles  and  such  like 
matters.  What  is,  is,  and  what  may  be,  may 

1  Anatole  France  would  hate  our  Puritan  practices, 
such  as  the  prohibition  of  billiards  in  hotels  and  of 
cricket  in  the  parks  on  Sunday. 
70 


ANATOLE  FKANCE 


be :  that  is  enough.  But  his  theology  is  so 
intermingled  with  his  human  interests  that 
at  bottom  he  is  a  pagan ;  he  loves  beauty  so 
well  that  he  discovers  it  even  in  faith,  and  it 
is  evident  that  he  would  have  found  much 
pleasure  in  the  rites  of  the  ancient  Greeks. 
In  his  celebrated  novel,  Thais,  he  hails  pagan 
beauty  as  he  holds  up  for  our  contemptuous 
sympathy  the  sorrow  of  Paphnutius,  the 
monk  of  Arsinoe.  The  monk  set  forth  to 
redeem  Thais,  the  courtesan ;  for  her  beauty 
and  her  soul  he  abandoned  his  cell  and  his 
hair  shirt.  She  was  unhappy  and  super- 
stitious, and  she  feared  the  life  to  come; 
at  his  behest  she  turned  to  the  Christian 
God.  But  Paphnutius  burned  himself  with 
the  torch  he  had  lit :  Thais  assailed  him  in 
dream,  and  though  he  strove  to  fight  his 
passion  by  solitude,  by  fasting,  by  becom- 
ing a  stylite,  he  failed.  In  dream  he  dis- 
honoured his  soul,  and  at  last,  surrendering, 
he  rushed  to  Thais,  but  found  her  dying  and 
become  a  saint;  doubt,  fear  and  despair 
had  compassed  his  downfall,  and  it  was  too 
71 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

late  to  love:   he  could  be  naught  save  a 
vampire. 

The  story  is  one  of  violent  pageantry, 
of  Alexandria  crimson,  purple  and  gold,  of 
Alexandria  dancing  on  the  rosy  wharves 
where  great  ships  with  brown  sails  unloaded 
silks  and  spices,  Alexandria  offering  up  to 
the  old  gods,  Hermes  of  the  secret  smile 
and  Aphrodite  of  the  cup- like  breasts,  not 
the  smoking  holocausts  of  Jehovah,  but 
honey  and  garlands  of  flowers.  .  .  .  And 
on  the  other  side,  quite  near  the  sceptical, 
cynical,  gay,  intellectual  Greeks,  who  for  a 
pastime  and  as  in  a  Chelsea  drawing-room 
discussed  man  and  God,  the  horrid  state  of 
the  Christian  anchorites,  self- starved,  self- 
flogged,  verminous,  sour,  contemptuous  of 
the  beauty  of  the  body,  of  learning.  There 
is  a  bitter  irony  in  the  efforts  of  Paphnutius, 
the  stylite,  for  as  he  sits  upon  his  column  as 
far  as  he  can  from  man  and  as  near  as  possible 
to  God,  his  reputation  as  a  saint  waxes; 
round  him  there  grows  a  town,  Stylopolis, 
an  ancestor  of  Lourdes;  first  of  all  come 
72 


ANATOLE  FKANCE 


shrines  and  convents,  then  traders,  then  a 
government,  then  banks,  theatres  .  .  .  the 
rich,  the  sons  of  the  rich  .  .  .  courtesans. 
He  does  not  hate  Paphnutius  nor  love  him, 
for  the  monk  was  unfortunate,  not  guilty ; 
gladly  would  he  have  torn  out  his  heart  and 
burnt  it  as  an  offering  to  God  the  Christ. 
His  was  a  white,  burning  soul,  but  he  had  be- 
yond a  soul  a  body  needing  lightness,  satis- 
faction. His  flesh  was  weak,  and  it  is  pitiful 
rather  than  rejoicing  that  Anatole  France 
sorrows  for  his  error,  when  the  monk  sees 
Lucifer  as  "  the  serpent  with  golden  wings 
which  twisted  round  the  tree  of  knowledge 
its  azure  coils  formed  of  light  and  love," 
when  he  sees  Jehovah,  the  brutish  tyrant, 
the  power  of  ignorance  and  superstition,  the 
power  of  darkness,  Jehovah,  understand- 
ing nothing,  a  mere  dream.  It  is  a  terrible 
day  for  Paphnutius  when  he  understands  that 
"  the  Serpent  began  to  speak  to  Adam  and 
Eve  and  to  teach  them  the  highest  truths, 
those  which  do  not  demonstrate  themselves." 
All  this  feeling  is  in  The  Revolt  of  the 
73 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

Angds,  the  most  remarkable  of  Anatole 
France's  theological  books,  as  Penguin 
Island  is  his  principal  political  book.  It  is 
an  amusing  story,  this  idea  that  the  angels, 
as  knowledge  and  thought  spread  among 
them,  should  one  by  one  desert  the  heavenly 
choir,  come  to  earth  to  live  among  men, 
to  love  them,  and  attempt  to  overthrow 
Him  who  has  stood  in  the  way  of  every 
science  and  of  every  art.  The  book  is 
brilliant  because  it  so  casually  intermingles 
the  actual  with  the  fantastic.  The  angels 
who  descend  to  earth  and  turn  into  men 
become  music  masters  (obviously),  con- 
spirators, commercial  travellers,  and  here 
below  prepare  the  spiritual  revolution.  The 
career  of  the  principal  angel,  Arcade,  is  ex- 
ceedingly amusing,  for  he  ravages  by  night 
the  theological  libraries,  being  bent  on  gain- 
ing an  education  which  was  not  given  him  in 
Paradise.  And  there  is  a  fair  amount  of 
the  most  incongruous,  but  almost  engaging, 
indecency.  It  would  be  too  much  to  describe 
the  incident  exactly  here,  but  I  think  I  may 
74 


ANATOLE  FKANCE 


say  that  Arcade,  who  is  the  guardian  angel 
of  a  young  man  called  Maurice,  appears  in 
the  latter's  bedroom  at  a  moment  .  .  .  well, 
at  an  inopportune  moment.  And  when  at 
last  he  has  convinced  Maurice  that  he  really 
is  an  angel,  Maurice  says  something  which 
could  be  said  only  by  a  Parisian :  "  You 
may  be  an  angel,  but  you  are  not  a  man  of 
the  world."  He  is  wrong,  for  a  little  later 
Arcade,  in  the  very  same  room,  demon- 
strates to  the  lady  whose  reputation  he  com- 
promised by  his  sudden  materialisation, 
that  angels  are  close  relatives  of  men. 

But  apart  from  scenes  where  angels  button 
up  the  boots  of  ladies,  which  is  very  clever 
of  them,  considering  how  little  practice  they 
can  have  had,  there  is  in  the  book  to  a  much 
greater  extent  than  in  Thais  a  passionate 
plea  for  the  intellectual  side  of  paganism, 
the  one  embodying  all  that  is  young  and  all 
that  is  enlightened,  embodying  the  joys 
which  the  god  of  the  Jews  endeavoured  to 
drive  out  of  the  domain  of  man.  And  there 
is  more  than  one  picture  of  Satan  as  the  god 
75 


WKITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

of  grace  (presumably  precipitated  into  hell 
on  account  of  his  advanced  ideas),  of  Satan 
loving  man.  There  is  picture  after  picture 
of  the  Son  of  the  Morning  who  once  was 
Pan.  In  the  end  the  angels  do  not  revolt, 
for  Satan  in  his  dream  realises  that  if  he 
overthrows  God  and  establishes  himself  as 
another  god,  he  will  only  become  as  his  pre- 
decessor, harsh,  dogmatic,  intolerant,  greedy 
of  praise,  hostile  to  anything  which  might 
rear  up  in  the  mind  of  the  people  the  idea 
of  a  new  god.  Satan  will  not  reign,  and  he 
sums  up :  "  What  matters  if  man  is  no  longer 
subject  to  laldabaoth,  if  the  spirit  of  lalda- 
baoth  is  still  in  them  ?  if  like  him  they  are 
jealous,  violent,  quarrelsome,  greedy,  inimi- 
cal to  the  arts  and  to  beauty  ?  what  matters 
if  they  have  rejected  the  ferocious  demon 
if  they  listen  not  to  the  friendly  demons 
who  teach  all  truths,  to  Dionysus,  Apollo 
and  the  muses  ?  As  for  us,  celestial  spirits, 
sublime  demons,  we  have  destroyed  lalda- 
baoth, our  tyrant,  if  we  have  destroyed  in 
ourselves  ignorance  and  fear." 
76 


IV 
HISTORIAN  AND  POLITICIAN 

THOUGH  deeply  interested  in  the 
past,  Anatole  France  has  written 
singularly  little  pure  history.  His 
vision  being  universal,  most  of  his  critical 
work  is  informed  with  historic  feeling,  but 
in  spite  of  his  love  of  ancient  chronicles, 
in  spite  of  knowledge  which  might  shame 
the  College  of  Heralds  and  the  Record  Office 
put  together,  he  has  preferred  to  use  history 
as  raw  material  for  romance.  He  has  been 
right,  in  a  way,  for  most  historians  have 
used  romance  as  the  raw  material  of  history 
and  made  of  it,  with  a  few  exceptions,  such 
as  Green,  Gibbon,  Michelet,  Mommsen,  an 
unreadable,  unfinished  product.  Anatole 
France  knows  that,  and  possibly  he  has 
hesitated  to  write  history  because  he  had 
not  the  details  he  needed  to  write  it  as  he 
wished;  those  details  were  the  history  of 
77 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

the  people,  the  real  history,  the  plough- 
man's menu,  and  what  the  merchant  said 
to  his  wife  about  Mr  Pitt  before  they  fell 
asleep ;  battles  and  dates  make  him  smile. 
He  expresses  this  very  well  in  the  preface  to 
The  Life  of  Joan  of  Arc.  "  To  discern  the 
future  one  must  consider  not  the  enterprises 
of  the  great  but  the  confused  movements  of 
the  labouring  masses." 

Once  only  has  he  written  an  actual  historic 
work,  and  that  is  his  monumental  study  of 
Joan  of  Arc.  It  has  made  him  more  un- 
popular than  all  his  works  put  together, 
from  which  it  is  easy  to  conclude  that  it 
is  a  work  of  worth  and  nobility.  It  is  an 
enormous,  encyclopaedic  study  showing  that 
he  has  consulted  every  possible  source  of 
information:  archives,  chronicles,  diaries, 
private  letters  and  reports  of  the  merest  tittle 
tattle ;  he  knows  almost  too  much  about  the 
Maid  of  Orleans,  and  this  makes  it  difficult 
to  read  the  work.  But  the  one  who  perse- 
veres will  be  richly  rewarded,  for  Anatole 
France  sheds  some  new  light  upon  the 
78 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


chevaliere.  It  is  the  preface  and  the  adden- 
dum have  made  him  hated  by  the  clericals, 
for  he  impugns  the  chronicles  as  mostly 
having  been  written  by  chroniclers  paid  by 
the  knights ;  pitilessly  he  shows  up  their 
discrepancies,  their  omissions,  he  depicts 
Joan  of  Arc  as  a  hallucinated,  hysterical 
girl,  subject  to  visions  which  in  those  days 
afflicted  many  a  girl  on  the  threshold  of 
womanhood.  For  him  her  sight,  smell, 
hearing,  sense  of  contact,  all  were  decayed, 
and  he  inclines  to  think  that  she  was  in- 
fluenced by  priests  favourable  to  the  cause 
of  Charles  VII.  Those  priests  were 
politicians  and,  knowing  her  simplicity,  led 
her  and  used  her.  They  had  no  difficulty 
in  this,  for  the  people  were  ignorant  and 
believed  because  they  wanted  to  believe. 
As  he  himself  says :  "  Belief  in  her  sanctity 
was  as  hypnotic  as  would  be  to-day  a  belief 
in  aeroplanes."  It  is  not  wonderful  that, 
assuming  an  attitude  such  as  this  towards  one 
whom  M.  Bergeret  called  a  military  mascot, 
Anatole  France  should  have  been  violently 
79 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

attacked  by  the  reactionaries ;  that  was  a 
little  unfair,  for  all  through  the  book  Anatole 
France  recognises  the  simplicity,  the  purity, 
the  courage  and  the  true  enthusiasm  of 
Joan,  but  he  will  not  grant  her  divine  in- 
spiration. That  is  unpardonable  in  the  eyes 
of  the  reactionaries,  who  forget  that  it  took 
the  popes  over  four  hundred  and  fifty  years 
to  canonise  her ;  they  want  to  use  Joan  of 
Arc  in  the  cause  of  the  Church  and  the  King, 
and  it  does  not  do  at  all  to  have  that  touch- 
ing conviction  disturbed:  it  was  not  the 
Kaiser  invented  the  alliance  of  Meinself 
(und  Gott). 

Animosity  has  not  disturbed  Anatole 
France,  for  "  one  conquers  the  earth  only 
by  ploughing  it."  He  has  told  the  story 
simply,  without  heroics,  painted  a  poetic 
picture  of  Joan  growing  up  "  on  bitter  soil 
among  rough  and  sober  folk,  fed  on  rosy 
wine  and  brown  bread,  hardened  by  a  hard 
life  "  ;  she  had  knowledge  of  tree- worship, 
and  hung  garlands  on  the  boughs  as  does 
to-day  Russian  youth  on  the  birch- tree; 
80 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


she  was  a  pagan  and  grew  up  among  private 
wars,  fire,  blood  and  murder.  It  is  all 
extraordinarily  living,  for  Anatole  France 
speaks  familiarly,  using  the  names  of  local 
tradesmen,  peasants  and  lawyers.  And  so 
the  story  goes  on  on  the  well-known  lines, 
continually  critical,  for  Joan  reveals  the 
clerical  influence  by  using  terms  known 
only  to  ecclesiastics * ;  she  uses  sometimes 
peasant  language,  sometimes  rhetoric,  as  if 
she  had  a  double  personality ;  she  is  fierce, 
obstinate,  firm,  as  if  hypnotised;  she  im- 
presses the  crowd  by  refusing  Charles  the 
name  of  King  until  she  herself  has  led  him 
to  Reims.  Anatole  France  is  fair  even  to 
the  English,  who  were  cruel  only  because 
they  were  afraid  of  her  as  "  a  superhuman, 
terrible,  frightful  creature,  a  demon  from 
hell  before  whom  the  bravest  quailed." 
Anatole  France  criticises  Joan  also  as  a 
strategist,  in  which  role,  it  seems,  she  was 
most  incompetent;  but  faith  may  inflame 
where  strategy  fails.  Her  strength  came 

1  Miracle  ? 
p  81 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

evidently  from  her  inflated  view  of  her 
mission,  so  common  in  lunatic  asylums,  for 
she  went  so  far  as  to  dream  of  a  crusade 
against  the  Turks  and  the  Hussites.  .  .  . 

All  this  is  implied,  not  stated ;  Anatole 
France  advances  few  opinions,  digresses  not 
often ;  he  tells  the  story  simply  and  allows 
us  to  draw  our  own  conclusions.  Apart 
from  the  historical  references,  the  book  is 
as  simple  as  Renan's  Life  of  Jesus,  and 
as  damaging.  Anatole  France  is  happiest 
when  painting  pictures  of  the  enthusiastic 
mobs,  swearing  the  oaths  of  men-at-arms 
and  singing  songs  with  the  ribald  women, 
painting  pictures  of  the  towns  in  the  wars 
of  the  Middle  Ages.  At  times,  however,  he 
cannot  restrain  himself,  must  discuss  a  side 
issue  that  interests  him,  such  as  the  worship 
of  virtue  and  of  virgins.  Then  his  charm 
grows  Virgilian :  "  In  this  land  of  Gaul 
the  white  priestesses  of  the  forests  had 
left  some  memory  of  their  holy  beauty; 
and  sometimes  one  saw,  fleeting  in  the  Isle 
of  Sein,  along  the  misty  shores  of  the  sea, 
82 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


the  pale  shadow  of  the  nine  sisters  who, 
in  bygone  days,  at  will  laid  or  awoke  the 
storm." 

It  is  not  a  disrespectful,  but  a  critical 
book,  and  I  suppose  it  is  true  enough  that 
the  inspiration  of  Joan  merely  served  to 
bring  luck  to  the  French  troops,  was  indeed 
a  military  mascot.  To  claim  more  is  to 
claim  a  little  too  much,  for  did  not,  during 
the  European  War,  Englishmen,  French- 
men, Russians,  Germans  all  invoke  the 
Almighty  and  make  quite  sure  that  He  was 
on  their  side  ?  Yet  everybody  cannot  win ; 
the  Christian  God  is  no  Janus. 

Far  more  interesting  for  ordinary  reading 
is  his  pseudo- novel,  The  Gods  are  Athirst. 
In  that  book  he  tells  the  story  of  a  Jacobin, 
Gamelin,  living  through  the  Revolution  of 
1789,  active  terrorist,  ready  to  sacrifice  sister, 
mother,  sweetheart,  upon  the  altar  of 
liberty,  hard,  narrow  in  the  forehead, 
obsessed.  Anatole  France  leads  us  through 
sumptuous  scenes,  the  murder  of  Marat,  the 
death  of  Robespierre,  while  Gamelin  every 
83 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

day  grows  more  bloodthirsty,  more  pitiless. 
The  creature  is  marvellously  living,  for  in 
his  madness  and  his  blood- lust  he  responds 
to  all  the  affectations  of  revolutionary  days, 
the  personal  oppositions  between  the  red 
hands  and  the  white  hands,  to  the  ridiculous 
imitation  of  Roman  citizenship  which  led  to 
men  calling  themselves  Brutus  or  Cicero.  Yet 
the  ridiculous  is  not  without  its  nobility,  for 
Gamelin  falls  at  last  a  victim  to  the  guillotine, 
and  then  says,  splendidly:  "  I  die  justly. 
It  is  well  that  we  should  bear  those  insults 
levelled  at  the  republic  against  which  we 
should  have  protected  it.  We  were  weak, 
we  have  been  guilty  of  indulgence.  We  have 
betrayed  the  republic.  .  .  .  Robespierre  him- 
self, pure  and  saintly,  sinned  by  gentleness, 
by  pity  ...  I  have  spared  blood,  let  my 
blood  flow."  That  is  not  so  extraordinary 
as  it  seems,  for  Gamelin,  the  executioner, 
believes  in  virtue,  in  a  high  ideal  and,  as 
everybody  should  know,  there  is  no  creature 
in  the  world  so  brutal  and  so  venomous  as 
one  who  is  working  for  the  good  of  mankind. 
84 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


The  virtue  of  the  book  is  not  in  the 
history,  but  in  Anatole  France's  acute  con- 
sciousness of  the  things  that  happen  while 
history  is  being  made.  There  are  picnics, 
talks  about  art;  there  is  a  sentimental 
amourette  between  Brotteaux,  the  old 
aristocrat,  and  a  sweet  courtesan ;  there  is 
an  old  priest  who  does  not  mind  having  his 
head  cut  off,  but  does  object  in  court  to  being 
called  a  Capuchin  when  he  really  is  a 
Barnabite.  It  is  all  deeply  human,  and  one 
scene  at  least  is  unforgettable,  a  love  scene. 
(Of  course  .  .  .  those  are  mostly  unfor- 
gettable.) It  is  not  the  recurrent  scene 
between  Gamelin  and  his  mistress  who, 
by  the  way,  and  it  is  a  charming  irony, 
invites  his  rival  to  her  bedroom  on  the 
day  of  Gamelin's  execution  in  exactly  the 
words  she  used  to  Gamelin  himself;  it  is 
a  scene  on  the  day  when  Charlotte  Corday 
murdered  Marat.  There  is  a  great  crowd 
and  Gamelin,  in  the  press,  meets  his  friend 
Desmahis.  He  tries  to  detain  him  to  talk 
about  Marat,  but  Desmahis  is  almost  in 
85 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

tears ;  he  curses  the  crowd,  he  was  following 
a  fair- haired  girl,  a  shopgirl,  a  divine  girl, 
and  the  crowd  has  parted  them.  "  But 
Marat .  .  ."  says  Gamelin.  "  Marat,  Marat !" 
growls  Desmahis.  "  That's  all  very  well, 
but  I've  lost  my  fair- haired  girl." 

It  is  hard  to  realise  that  men  follow  shop- 
girls while  empires  fall,  but  it  is  most  likely, 
and  I  suspect  that  Anatole  France  thinks 
it  more  important. 

As  it  is  the  fate  of  Anatole  France  to  be 
unpopular  whatever  he  does,  it  is  not  sur- 
prising that  The  Gods  are  Athirst  should 
have  annoyed  the  advanced  people  as  much 
as  The  Life  of  Joan  of  Arc  did  the  reaction- 
aries. That  is  because  he  loves  truth  and 
is  one  of  the  few  people  in  the  world  who 
realise  that  truth  is  neither  blue  nor  buff. 
He  has  been  charged  with  having  fouled 
the  noblest  work  of  man;  that  is  untrue, 
only  he  is  determined  not  to  be  taken  in 
and  will  not  see  the  Red  Virgin  as  spotless. 
Great  things  can  be  done  by  little  men,  done 
clumsily,  cruelly,  and  yet  somehow  done. 
86 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


That  is  more  or  less  what  Anatole  France 
shows  in  this  book;  the  verdict  of  the 
people  is  not  for  him  the  voice  of  God,  but 
this  does  not  imply  that  the  voice  of  the 
aristocrat  is  any  more  divine.  He  cannot 
help  seeing  that  the  democracy  is  ignorant, 
prejudiced,  greedy,  coarse- minded,  and  yet 
at  the  same  time  he  finds  in  it  the  seeds  of 
generosity  and  of  that  justice  so  much  more 
costly  than  the  mercy  now  and  then  vouch- 
safed with  a  fine  gesture  by  those  who 
dominate  man.  Irony  and  pity,  pity  and 
hope,  it  is  always  the  same  gospel. 

In  The  Gods  are  Aihirst  Anatole  France 
seemed  to  have  receded  from  the  pronounced 
socialism  which  colours  his  views.  That  is 
all  on  the  surface,  and  in  The  Revolt  of  the 
Angels,  published  a  year  later,  it  was 
obvious  that  he  had  denied  none  of  his 
views ;  only,  and  it  is  so  difficult  to  make 
people  understand  this,  Anatole  France 
is  a  Socialist  and  he  is  also  sane.  He 
will  not  have  it  that  a  Socialist  is  neces- 
sarily a  saint;  that  the  democracy  is 
87 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

immaculate ;  and  it  is  because  lie  finds 
the  human  being  behind  the  tribune,  while 
the  followers  of  the  tribune  insist  upon  see- 
ing him  as  a  sort  of  historical  hero,  a  county 
Achilles,  that  in  their  quite  honest  stupidity 
they  are  annoyed.  If  Anatole  France  had 
been  born  in  England  and  entered  politics 
there,  his  influence  would  not  have  been 
large,  because,  in  this  country,  what  we  like 
is  a  good,  stodgy,  immovable  view;  if  at 
the  age  of  twenty  you  believed  in  Mr 
Gladstone,  at  the  age  of  sixty  you  have  to 
believe  in  Mr  Asquith,  and  there  you  are. 
Doggedness,  never  say  die,  the  bulldog 
breed,  all  that  sort  of  stuff.  The  idea  is 
that  one  should  run  one's  head  against  a 
brick  wall  in  the  hope  of  knocking  it  over : 
one  does  sometimes,  if  one's  head  is  hard 
enough,  but  that  successful  kind  of  head 
does  not  readily  admit  a  new  idea.  Being 
a  Frenchman,  Anatole  France  has  been  more 
fortunate;  he  is  not  a  bit  more  original 
than  Mr  Shaw,  though  infinitely  more 
sympatique,  for  his  smile  is  honeyed,  not 
88 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


vinegary;  still,  if  Mr  Shaw  had  been  a 
Frenchman  his  countrymen  would  have 
taken  him  seriously.  And  we,  too,  perhaps, 
once  he  was  translated. 

Anatole  France  came  into  the  open  in  the 
course  of  the  Dreyfus  case,  and  since  that 
time  he  has  never  ceased  to  interest  himself 
actively  instead  of  philosophically  in  every- 
thing that  was  unhappy  and  oppressed — 
workers,  natives,  generally  speaking  the 
underdogs.  His  little  book,  The  Church 
and  the  Republic,  published  in  1905,  in  which 
he  demolishes  the  case  for  the  absolute 
freedom  of  the  Catholic  Church,  because 
there  is  not  absolute  freedom,  but  only  so 
much  as  does  not  clash  with  other  freedoms, 
had  an  immense  success  and  powerfully 
assisted  M.  Combes  in  his  campaign  for 
Disestablishment.  Anatole  France,  heir  of 
Voltaire  and  Renan,  has  always  seen  the 
Church,  a  survival  full  of  charm  and  grace, 
as  the  enemy  of  the  people.  Had  it  not 
been  for  the  hierarchy,  I  do  not  believe  he 
would  have  attacked  the  faith:  religion 
89 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

would  have  made  a  pretty  toy  for  the  child 
that  calls  itself  man.  But  religion  allied 
with  ministers  and  financiers,  sabre- rattlers, 
religion  a  la  Kaiser,  he  has  sworn  to  root  out. 
He  wants  to  do  this  because  he  has  a  vision 
of  a  humanity  to  come  when  none  shall 
suffer  at  the  hands  of  the  State,  when  one 
sex  will  not  crush  and  the  other  deceive, 
when  black  faces  may  smile  on  white.  He 
has  expounded  his  creed  in  many  political 
speeches,  though  he  is  not  a  good  speaker ; 
he  has  come  before  his  audience  with  his 
long,  whimsical,  Pan- like  face  and  his 
sorrowful  eyes,  flicking  them  with  irony  and 
yet  touching  their  hearts,  asking  always  for 
justice  and  yet  for  sanity.  His  speeches  are 
like  his  writings,  except  that  he  has  a  Latin 
fondness  for  the  rhetorical  question.  They 
are  polished,  literary,  and  he  generally  be- 
gins like  an  American  by  telling  his  audience 
one  or  two  humorous  stories :  he  believes 
in  laughter,  and  he  who  laughs  with  him 
will  soon  think  with  him.  But  there  is 
always  a  sting  in  those  stories :  it  is  not  for 
90 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


nothing  that  he  is  so  fond  of  telling  the  old 
fairy  tale  of  the  wrestler  who  could  turn 
himself  into  a  dragon  and  then,  if  St  George 
appeared,  into  a  duck:  there  are  many 
of  our  Cabinet  ministers  who  have  been 
dragons  at  the  Albert  Hall  and  ducks  in 
Committee  Room  15,  with,  as  Anatole 
France  says,  "  a  domestic  animal's  mild 
voice." 

It  is,  however,  his  writings  that  matter 
most ;  though  opposed  to  war,  it  is  interest- 
ing to  observe  that  he  approves  of  the 
European  War  of  1914.  At  the  age  of 
seventy  he  demonstrated  this  by  laying 
down  his  pen  and  asking  the  French  War 
Office  for  a  rifle.  But  in  the  main  he 
hates  war,  though  he  be  not  Tolstoyan 
enough  to  believe  in  non-resistance.  He 
hates  war  because  it  is  not  good  business 
for  the  soul  of  man ;  I  do  not  think  he  is 
much  upset  by  slaughter  or  starvation,  for 
humanity  must  die  somehow,  but  he  knows 
that  a  war  makes  vile  those  who  survive. 
And  if  one  reads  The  White  Stone  one  easily 
91 


WKITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

understands  him.  It  is  an  incoherent  work, 
for  the  several  stories  it  contains  are  quite 
unrelated;  it  is  the  sort  of  conversation 
four  or  five  cultured  men  might  hold  if  they 
were  to  sit  up  for  the  night  with  wine  and 
cigarettes.  It  is  rather  long-winded,  here 
and  there  dull,  pedagogic,  but  it  represents 
him  fairly  well  from  an  intellectual  point 
of  view,  though  it  contains  none  of  the 
indecency,  blasphemy  and  Falstaffian  fun 
which  pervade  his  writings.  It  is  philo- 
sophical, a  little  rigid,  rather  Protestant: 
but  then  Anatole  France  is  seldom  a  good 
Catholic,  except  when  he  is  chalking  up 
on  the  cathedral  wall:  "  To  hell  with  the 
Pope ! "  The  first  part  is  classical,  and 
holds  nothing  that  he  has  not  said  in  other 
works  except  one  concentrated  phrase: 
"  The  saints  are  a  new  mythology."  He 
then  passes  on  to  the  story  of  Gallic,  who 
is  perhaps,  philosophically  speaking,  the 
most  seductive  pagan  in  the  New  Testament, 
a  minor  rival  being,  of  course,  Pontius 
Pilate. 

92 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


Here  is  Gallic,  administrator  of  a  Roman 
province,  facing  the  problems  of  Nero's 
unsuitable  marriage  with  Octavia,  of  the 
education  of  little  boys,  and  of  the  fish 
trade.  ...  It  is  all  very  Roman,  a  little 
pompous,  a  little  dull,  rather  like  England 
about  1860.  Gallic  is  not  joyous,  for  he 
has  no  illusions ;  he  knows  that  "  men  will 
die,  will  kill  every  enemy,"  that  "  human 
laws  are  daughters  of  anger  and  fear." 
And  he  has  official  troubles,  for  the  Jews 
are  always  indulging  in  religious  wrangles, 
refusing  to  have  images  of  the  emperor 
in  their  temples.  This  gets  Gallic  into 
trouble,  and  he  thinks  it  absurd,  for  "  one 
should  honour  all  religions,  think  them  all 
holy."  But  the  wrangles  of  the  Jews  are 
forced  on  him,  and  he  despairs  of  making 
them  understand  that  they  must  manage 
their  own  silly  business,  that  he  is  interested 
only  in  law  and  order.  He  personally 
thinks  that  this  new  God,  Christ,  is  a  mere 
jumble  of  two  old  ones,  of  Orpheus,  who 
descended  into  hell,  and  of  Adonis,  who 
93 


WKITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

suffered  and  died.  Gallic  does  not  object 
to  the  new  God,  but  he  wishes  he  would  not 
embarrass  the  Government ;  in  Gallio's 
view  the  new  God  is  a  bore,  but  he  is  also 
a  nuisance,  for  "  there  are  in  Asia  lots  of 
these  youthful  gods  who  die  and  rise  again, 
and  good  women  take  more  pleasure  in 
them  than  they  should."  And  then  Gallic 
goes  on  wearily  to  control  complex  adminis- 
tration, while  the  modernised  fictional 
version  of  the  Acts  unfolds  .  .  .  and  Stephen 
is  stoned  while  a  philosopher  makes  love 
to  loessa.  .  .  . 

This  touches  Anatole  France's  theories  of 
government,  and  it  is  not  wonderful  that  he 
should  be  so  interested  in  Saint  Paul,  whom 
Gallic  would  have  looked  upon  as  an  un- 
educated person.  He  speculates  agreeably 
on  the  discomfort  Paul  would  feel  in  Rome 
to-day,  unable  to  understand  Catholics  and 
Protestants,  and  amazed  because  Judge- 
ment Day  had  not  yet  occurred.  "  The 
only  place  for  him  to-day  would  be  Jeru- 
salem." But  Anatole  France  does  not  long 
94 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


dwell  upon  this  jumble  of  religion  and 
government  which  was  evidently  suggested 
to  him  by  the  differences  between  the 
French  State  and  the  Catholic  Church.  He 
becomes  more*  general.  He  believes  in  a 
future  peace  brought  about,  not  by  man's 
goodness,  but  by  economic  necessity,  which 
must  please  Mr  Norman  Angell.  This,  of 
course,  involves  a  change  in  our  attitude  to 
coloured  races,  who  "  know  us  only  by  our 
crimes."  Anatole  France  sees  that  from  the 
point  of  view  of  Asia  we  are  the  white  peril, 
and  he  can  find  no  reason  why  Admiral  Togo 
should  not  come  with  twelve  battleships  to 
bombard  Brest  to  assist  the  Japanese  trade 
in  France.  And  then  he  agreeably  meanders ; 
he  figures  the  revolting  French  besieging 
the  legations  of  China  and  Japan  in  Paris, 
and  Marshal  Oyama  bringing  the  allied 
armies  of  the  East  to  the  Boulevard  des 
Italiens  to  demand  the  punishment  of  the 
French  Boxers,  burning  down  Versailles  in 
the  name  of  a  superior  civilisation,  and  steal- 
ing the  dinner-set  of  the  Elysee.  It  is  all 
95 


WKITEKS  OF  THE  DAY 

very  cutting  if  we  remember  what  we  did 
in  1900,  and  Anatole  France  amiably  adds: 
"  No,  this  has  not  happened.  Yellow  men 
are  not  civilised  enough  so  faithfully  to 
imitate  the  white." 

For  Anatole  France,  the  colonial  mania 
is  purely  economic,  and  he  considers  that 
Japan  has  done  a  great  service  to  the  union 
of  races  by  compelling  the  white  man  to 
respect  the  yellow;  he  does  not  despair 
even  of  the  black,  who,  he  points  out,  are 
evolving  in  South  America,  growing  edu- 
cated and  much  superior  to  the  Europeans 
of  2000  B.C.  Of  course  this  means  "  no 
more  colonies,"  which  he  looks  upon  as 
swindles,  for  "  France  has  expended  men 
and  money  so  that  the  Congo,  Cochin- China, 
Annam,  Tonkin  .  .  .  may  buy  cotton- 
goods  in  Manchester,  weapons  in  Birming- 
ham and  Liege,  spirits  in  Dantzig,  and  claret 
in  Hamburg."  He  is  right,  though 
humanity  will  not  realise  that  until  the  day 
comes  for  it  to  haul  down  its  buntings.  But 
he  is  not  hopeless.  He  believes  that  even 
96 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


military  men  are  growing  more  peaceful, 
that  they  want  "  a  pompous,  magnificent, 
shining  peace,  proud  as  war."  Evidently 
he  must  hold  such  a  belief,  for  in  the  same 
book  is  his  idea  of  Utopia.  It  is  a  queer, 
intellectual  Utopia,  very  different  from  Mr 
Wells',  and  probably  rather  distasteful  to 
most  of  us.  He  figures  men  and  women  in 
the  international  State,  dressed  alike  (and  I 
wonder  whether  the  other  Anatole  France 
has  not  in  his  mind  the  wicked  thought  of 
encouraging  delightful  surprises),  work  done 
by  machines,  a  six- hours'  day,  aeroplanes, 
small  private  dwellings,  no  towns,  few 
crimes  (property  having  gone) ;  he  sup- 
presses the  legal  class,  alcohol  ...  he  even 
suppresses  the  colon  by  operation  and  then 
eugenics.  It  is  the  ordinary  Socialist 
Utopia  with  the  labour  bond  system,  the 
right  to  live  for  art  and  science,  and  the 
wages  of  ability;  the  family,  of  course, 
goes,  and  the  sexless  increase.  That  is  not 
unattractive,  for  I  gather  that  Anatole 
France  wishes  to  make  procreation  less 
a  97 


WKITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

accidental  and  to  confine  it  to  those  who 
feel  intimately  impelled  to  it.  He  sees  the 
cinema  and  the  phonograph  ousting  the 
book,  which  is  too  individualistic ;  drama 
as  dead,  owing  to  a  lack  of  comedy  and 
tragedy  in  life.  That  is  what  most  of  us  will 
dislike  in  his  Utopia  (that  is  to  say,  tragedy 
in  the  lives  of  other  people  and  comedy  in 
ours).  Religion  persists,  but  in  a  great 
schismatic  mess,  and  there  is  even  a  Pope 
who  fulfils  his  mission  after  hours,  for  he  is 
a  dyer  in  Rome.  All  this  is  fairly  common- 
place, but  it  carries  a  number  of  fine  criti- 
cisms, some  of  them  generous,  such  as  that 
of  capitalism,  which  "  was  a  great  social  pro- 
gress, created  the  proletariat,  made  a  state 
inside  the  State,  prepared  the  emancipation 
of  the  workers  and  supplied  them  with 
means  to  power."  That  shows  a  true  sense 
of  the  evolution  of  man:  the  need  for 
educating  him  out  of  his  nomadic  state  by 
showing  him  how  to  combine  in  factories, 
armies,  republics.  And  Anatole  France  is 
not  too  ambitious,  for  he  does  not  think  that 


ANATOLE  FKANCE 


equality  can  be  established  "as  we  do  not 
know  what  it  is."  All  he  wants  is  to  assure 
a  living  to  all  and  to  make  work  honourable. 
Likewise  he  does  not  imagine  perfect 
liberty,  because  it  is  not  possible,  and,  above 
all,  he  does  not  believe  that  men  will  be  good 
or  bad :  "  They  will  be  what  they  will  be." 
That  is  what  he  dreams  as  he  sleeps  on 
the  white  stone,  the  species  of  man  evolving 
into  another  race  possibly  fine,  possibly  vile, 
but  yet  worth  dreaming  of  because,  as  Mr 
Wells  says,  man  is  not  final,  and  so  long 
as  a  thing  is  not  final  it  has  the  charm  of  a 
closed  bud  that  conceals  a  flower  the  colour 
of  which  we  do  not  know.  Anatole  France 
does  not  say  whether  the  flower  will  burst 
forth  gorgeous  red  or  virginal  white ;  it  will 
be  what  it  will  be,  and  so  best,  for  whatever 
its  colour  and  its  form  it  will  be  that  thing 
which  he  loves  in  his  quiet,  smiling,  sober 
way,  the  flower  of  life. 


99 


V 

THE  CRAFTSMAN  AND  THE  MAN 

THIS  may  seem  enorme  and  yet  some- 
how it  is  not:  Anatole  France  is 
not  exactly  a  literary  man.  He  is 
not  a  literary  man  in  the  sense  of  Flaubert 
or  Turgenev,  for  he  is  not  content  with  being 
the  god  in  the  machine,  he  is  always  allow- 
ing you  to  see  him  guiding  it;  indeed  in 
most  of  his  work  he  is  the  god  in  the  car. 
That  is  probably  why  Anatole  France  has 
never  adopted  classical  form.  He  appreci- 
ates it,  and  in  the  many  critical  articles  he 
has  written  he  has  praised  just  those  people 
whose  form  was  perfect  .  .  .  but  it  is  the 
sick  man,  not  the  robust  man  admires  health. 
There  is  not  one  of  his  novels  properly  holds 
together.  I  mean  that  there  is  not  one  that 
develops  harmoniously  the  story  of  certain 
human  beings  in  a  given  atmosphere.  At 
times,  for  instance  in  the  four  volumes  of 
100 


ANATOLE  FKANCE 


Contemporary  History,  you  have  the  sense 
of  developing  lives,  and  then  Anatole 
France  puts  on  somebody  else's  coat,  like 
Maitre  Jacques,  transforms  himself  from 
coachman  into  cook,  calls  himself  Bergeret 
or  Bonnard,  or,  more  audaciously,  takes  on 
the  shape  of  Vence,  the  genial  worldling,  or 
of  Dechartre,  the  passionate  sculptor,  and 
talks.  As  soon  as  that  happens  the  novel 
is  forgotten ;  Anatole  France  takes  the 
reader  by  the  hand  and  draws  him  away 
to  pick  intellectual  primroses.  A  delightful 
exercise;  only  when  hundreds  of  these 
primroses  are  picked  you  have  forgotten 
the  novel  you  deserted.  I  have  mentioned 
already  the  incoherence  of  The  Crime  of 
Sylvestre  Bonnard.  Then  there  is  the 
famous  Red  Lily,  which  is  supposed  to  be 
a  love  story ;  it  is  a  love  story  of  the  most 
passionate  kind,  only  it  is  so  inextricably 
mixed  up  with  mystical  excursions  by  a 
vagabond,  ragged  poet,  evidently  modelled 
on  Verlaine,  with  views  on  pictorial  art  by 
Vence  and  Dechartre,  that,  interested  as 
101 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

one  is  all  the  time,  one  loses  one's  sense  of 
proportion.  When  the  lovers  meet  in  the 
beautiful  Florentine  pavilion  one  is  never 
sure  that  theirs  is  a  love  feast:  at  any 
moment  it  may  turn  into  an  essay  on  the 
glazes  of  Botticelli.  Anatole  France  must 
at  one  time  have  been  conscious  of  this,  for 
in  one  of  his  books,  Histoire  Comique,  he 
made  a  great  effort  to  tell  the  story  of  a 
little  actress  who  threw  over  her  actor  lover 
for  a  young  diplomat,  and  found  after  the 
suicide  of  the  actor  that  never  more  could 
she  come  together  with  her  new  lover  be- 
cause in  their  tenderest  moments  she  was 
haunted  by  the  bloody  spectre  of  the 
dead  man.  Histoire  Comique  is  finely 
written,  and  in  the  best  French  literary 
style ;  it  eloquently  evokes  the  life  of  the 
French  actress,  so  much  on  the  edge  of  the 
demi-monde  and  now  and  then  over  the  edge. 
It  is  almost  as  good  as  Les  Petites  Cardinal 
.  .  .  and  then  Anatole  France  spoils  it.  In 
comes  Doctor  Trublet,  in  other  words 
Anatole  France  himself,  talking  about 
102 


ANATOLE  FEANCE 


medicine,  about  morality,  about  faith,  talk- 
ing, everlastingly  talking.  Trublet  talks 
delightfully,  but  while  he  talks  one  thinks 
of  the  pretty  little  actress  in  whom  one  had 
grown  interested,  and  thinks :  "  Oh,  dear  old 
doctor,  do  stop  talking ;  kisses,  not  words, 
shall  win  the  prize."  But  then  Anatole 
France  has  never  cared  whether  his  ideas 
were  relevant  to  the  story;  it  has  always 
been  enough  for  him  that  they  should  be 
relevant  to  the  temperament  he  sketches. 

Perhaps  for  this  reason,  and  it  is  an  im- 
portant observation  if  one  is  to  judge  Anatole 
France  fairly,  his  characters  are  unusually 
living.  People  like  Captain  Victor,  Tudesco, 
bombastic,  ebullient,  Falstaffian  people, 
move  in  our  midst.  Their  creator  is  always 
poking  fun  at  them;  persistently  he  erects 
Aunt  Sallies  and  then  throws  bouquets  at 
them.  He  teases  them  because  he  loves 
them.  It  should  be  observed,  however,  and 
I  do  not  want  to  be  ill-natured  about  it, 
that  Anatole  France  never  pokes  fun  at 
the  characters  that  embody  his  own  person- 
103 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

ality.  Bergeret,  the  other  nice  old  gentle- 
men, Vence,  Dechartre,  are  never  absurd; 
they  are  amiable,  scholarly,  tender,  generous, 
and  have  a  strong  sense  of  humour.  I  do 
not  say  that  Anatole  France  ought  to  see 
his  ridiculous  side ;  I  do  not  see  it  myself, 
but  it  must  be  there.  Only,  and  you  must 
take  my  word  for  this  without  asking  for 
evidence,  it  is  not  in  the  nature  of  any  human 
being,  save  the  Englishman,  to  "  take  himself 
off."  I  have  known  a  good  many  French- 
men, Germans,  Austrians,  Spaniards,  and 
have  never  found  in  any  one  of  them  a 
glimmer  of  self -deprecation:  they  were  all 
supermen,  and  I  expect  were  much  the  same 
before  the  birth  of  Nietzsche.  Still,  and  I 
repeat  that  I  do  not  want  to  be  ill-natured 
about  it,  in  spite  of  that  little  failing,  it 
must  be  owned  that  this  little  band  of  in- 
carnations of  Anatole  France  is  very  human ; 
after  all,  Anatole  France  is  probably  human 
himself,  so  far  as  a  man  can  be  human  when 
he  is  sane.  Their  humanity  resides  in  their 
passion  for  life.  Every  one  of  them  holds 
104 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


the  creed  which  is  ideally  stated  in  the 
preface  to  Mademoiselle  de  Maupin.  As 
I  believe  Anatole  France  admires  Gautier,  I 
will  venture  to  quote  from  it : 

"  Pleasure  seems  to  me  to  be  the  object  of 
life,  and  the  only  useful  thing  in  the  world. 
God  has  so  willed  it,  who  made  women, 
perfume,  light,  beautiful  flowers,  good  wines, 
spirited  horses,  greyhounds  and  Persian 
cats.  He  has  not  said  to  his  angels :  '  Have 
virtue,'  but  '  Have  love,'  and  has  given  us 
lips  more  sensitive  than  the  rest  of  our  skin 
so  that  we  may  caress  women,  eyes  raised 
on  high  to  see  the  light,  subtle  scent  to 
breathe  the  soul  of  flowers,  sinewy  thighs 
to  grip  the  flanks  of  stallions  and  to  fly 
swift  as  thought  without  railway  or  engine, 
delicate  hands  to  draw  over  the  long  heads 
of  greyhounds,  the  velvet  lines  of  cats, 
and  the  gleaming  shoulders  of  creatures 
without  virtue ;  he  has  given  to  us  alone 
the  treble  and  glorious  privilege  of  drinking 
without  being  thirsty,  of  lighting  tinder  and 
of  making  love  at  all  times,  which  distin- 
guishes us  from  the  brutes  much  more  than 
the  habits  of  reading  newspapers  and  manu- 
facturing maps." 

105 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

In  this  preface  lives  much  of  Anatole 
France,  his  pure  hedonism,  his  pagan  love 
of  the  beautiful,  his  entire  lack  of  moral 
purpose,  counteracted  by  his  consciousness 
of  the  decent,  the  elegant  thing.  If  he 
believes,  as  I  think  he  does,  in  honour,  in 
truth,  courtesy,  pity,  service,  it  is  not  owing 
to  any  harsh  Protestant  moral  impulse,  but 
to  a  feeling  that  there  are  fine,  clean  things 
revealed  to  us  by  some  obscure  Kantian, 
categorical  imperative ;  if  he  has  a  morality 
at  all  it  is  the  Ingersollian  morality,  that  is 
to  say  obligation  perceived  by  a  fine  soul. 
It  is  this  inflames  his  style  and  links  him 
with  his  forbears,  with  Voltaire,  with  Renan, 
with  Moliere,  with  the  Italians  of  the  six- 
teenth century,  with  the  amiable  Latins, 
with  all  the  dead  who  loved  the  sunshine, 
with  the  gay  gods,  and  the  warriors  who,  on 
the  way  to  the  Elysian  fields,  did  not  turn 
their  backs  upon  wine,  woman  and  song. 
Not  for  him  the  sombre  fates  of  duty,  fear, 
retribution;  not  for  him  malignant  Jove 
any  more  than  malignant  Jehovah.  In  the 
106 


ANATOLE  FKANCE 


trenches  in  1870  he  read,  not  Sophocles,  not 
^Eschylus,  but  Virgil.  As  Brotteaux  went 
to  the  guillotine  he  read  Lucretius.  For 
him  flowers  and  honey  to  lay  upon  the  little 
altars  in  Ausonian  glades,  and  not  the  rapes 
and  arguments  of  ancient  Greece. 

A  Latin  by  heredity,  it  follows  that  Anatole 
France  wields  a  style  of  singular  purity. 
His  work  is  very  polished  and  very  con- 
densed. He  uses  as  few  words  as  possible 
to  embody  his  idea,  and  when  he  has  made 
his  point,  as,  for  instance,  in  stories  such 
as  The  Procurator  of  Judcea,  he  stops.  His 
desire  is  to  knock  out  his  reader,  but  he 
does  not,  like  Zola,  then  proceed  to  kneel 
and  to  roll  upon  the  prostrate  figure,  smother- 
ing it  and  flattening  it  out  under  a  vast  bulk. 
Anatole  France  never  flounders ;  he  does 
not  follow  the  man  who  did  so  much  damage 
to  the  literature  of  the  nineteenth  century 
by  piling  up  seventeen  unessential  details, 
crowned,  often  by  accident,  with  the  essential 
one.  Selection  is  with  him  a  habit,  and 
that  is  why  Anatole  France  will  never  be 
107 


WKITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

confounded  with  the  Zolas,  the  Sudermanns, 
the  William  de  Morgans.  Without  selection 
he  never  could  have  achieved  his  delicate 
little  pictures  of  men  and  women,  of  their 
passions  stated  in  a  paragraph  ;  and  still  less 
could  he  have  built  those  strange  animals 
that  he  so  loves.  They  are  not  always 
philosophical  animals  like  Riquet,  the  dog, 
praying  to  man,  his  god ;  sometimes  like 
Miragoane,  they  are  just  intelligent,  doggy 
dogs,  tail- wagging,  greedy,  apologetic,  ful- 
some dogs;  at  other  times  they  are  just 
decorative  beasts,  especially  the  cats.  For 
Anatole  France,  like  Theophile  Gautier,  like 
Baudelaire,  like  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  like  almost 
every  artist  who  really  is  an  artist,  loves  cats. 
In  his  eyes  the  cat  is  as  beautiful  as  woman. 
Here  is  a  scrap,  which  I  feel  I  render  in- 
adequately, devoted  to  sumptuous  Hamil- 
car,  the  Persian  cat  in  the  library: 

"  Hamilcar,  somnolent  prince  in  the  city 

of  books,  watcher  in  the  night !     Thou  dost 

defend  against  vile  rodents  those  things, 

manuscript  and  printed,  bought  for  the  old 

108 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


student  by  his  modest  hoard  and  his  tireless 
zeal.  In  this  silent  library  which  thy 
military  virtues  protect,  Hamilcar,  sleep 
languid  as  a  sultana.  For  thou  dost  unite 
in  thy  person  the  formidable  air  of  a  Tartar 
warrior  and  the  indolent  grace  of  an  Eastern 
maid.  Heroic  and  voluptuous  Hamilcar, 
sleep  until  the  mice  shall  dance  in  the  moon- 
light before  the  Acta  Sanctorum  of  the  learned 
Bollandists." 

That  is  poetry,  though,  as  I  have  sug- 
gested before  now,  Anatole  France,  in  spite 
of  his  great  love  of  the  beautiful,  is  too 
critical,  too  humorous,  has  too  much  de- 
tachment to  be  written  down  a  poet.  He 
loves  the  poets,  notably  Racine,  and  one 
does  not  quite  see  why.  But  he  is  not  a 
poet  because,  I  think,  he  is  too  remote ; 
the  blood  of  the  earth  does  not  flow  in  his 
veins,  and  it  may  be  that  if  he  were  closely 
questioned  he  would  confess  that  he  thinks 
life  very  useful  to  literature.  That  is  per- 
haps why  he  tolerates  it  so  well,  why  he  can 
smile  at  it,  be  serious  and  yet  poke  fun  at  it. 
What  a  Fabian  he  would  have  made ! 
109 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

One  word  as  to  his  short  stories.  He  is 
in  these  more  purely  literary  than  in  his 
novels,  presumably  because  in  short  stories 
he  has  not  space  enough  to  get  out  of  hand. 
A  few  of  them,  such  as  The  Procurator  oj 
JudcBa,  and  one  or  two  of  the  revolutionary 
tales  in  Mother  of  Pearl,  are  as  good  as  any 
French  short  stories,  while  Crainquebitte  and 
Putois  reach  the  highest  standard  of  de 
Maupassant.  Still,  there  is  nothing  to  say 
about  them  here :  there  is  only  one  thing  to 
do,  and  that  is  to  read  them.  There  are 
others,  though,  worth  mentioning  because, 
together  with  their  fine  literary  facture,  they 
carry  the  author's  ideas.  For  instance,  in 
Les  Sept  Femmes  de  la  Barbe  Bleue,  Anatole 
France  sets  to  work  to  rehabilitate  Blue- 
beard, who,  he  contends,  was  henpecked  and 
deceived,  though  a  very  good  fellow.  This 
is  Anatole  France's  little  fling  at  rumour  and 
misrepresentation.  It  amuses  him  to  trace 
rumour  to  its  sources,  and  I  can  imagine 
as  good  a  story  as  Putois,  the  gardener 
who  was  invented  and  in  the  end  nearly 
110 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


managed  to  exist,  being  written  round  the 
story  of  the  bombs  in  the  German  governess's 
bedroom  that  floated  about  during  the 
early  part  of  the  war.  This  is  half  mystical 
and  Anatole  France  is  not  a  mystic,  but 
he  has  written  several  stories,  to  which  I 
refer  a  little  later  on,  starting  from  which 
it  might  be  contended  that  if  humanity 
believed  strongly  enough  in  the  bomb  under 
the  bed  the  House  of  Commons  might 
eventually  be  blown  up.  Most  of  the  short 
stories,  however,  are  merely  novels  in  petto ; 
some  are  mediaeval,  many  Italian,  and, 
every  now  and  then,  they  are  modern  and 
ironic.  Most  of  them,  such  as  La  Chemise, 
where  operations  become  fashionable  among 
the  Smart  Set  and  where  the  professor  asks 
Society,  "  together  a  crowd  and  an  elite," 
to  his  five-o'clock  operation,  "a  charming 
bit  of  ovariotomy,"  to  the  accompaniment 
of  flowers,  pretty  frocks,  music  and  ices, 
are  a  criticism  of  life.  This  story  recalls  a 
kind  of  life  we  know,  for  we  are  told  that 
"the  professor's  elegance  and  grace  were 
111 


WEITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

marvellous.     The  operation  was  taken  for 
the  cinema." 

All  through  these  stories  runs  his  philo- 
sophy : 

"  I  love  life  which  is  earthy  life,  life  as  it 
is,  this  dog's  life.  I  love  it  brutal,  vile  and 
gross.  I  love  it  sordid,  dirty,  spoilt ;  I  love 
it  stupid,  imbecile  and  cruel;  I  love  it  in 
its  obscenity,  in  its  infamy,  with  its  violence, 
its  stinks,  its  corruptions  and  its  infections. 
.  .  .  On  Sundays  I  go  among  the  people,  I 
mix  with  the  crowd  that  flows  in  the  streets, 
I  plunge  into  groups  of  men,  women  and 
children,  which  form  round  street-singers  or 
before  the  booths  at  fairs;  I  touch  dirty 
coats  and  greasy  bodices;  I  breathe  the 
strong,  warm  scents  of  sweat,  of  hair,  of 
breaths.  In  this  well  of  life  I  feel  further 
from  death.  Death :  nothingness,  that  is  an 
infinite  naught,  and  this  naught  envelops 
us.  Thence  we  come  and  hence  we  go ; 
we  are  always  two  nothingnesses  as  a  shell 
upon  the  waters.  Nothingness  is  the  im- 
possible and  the  assured ;  it  is  inconceivable 
and  it  is." 

A  quotation  such  as  this,  taken  in  con- 
112 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


junction  with  the  earlier  quotation  from  the 
preface  of  Mademoiselle  de  Maupin,  outlines 
the  man  within  the  writer,  and  I  need  not 
labour  that  the  faith  of  Anatole  France  is  the 
faith  of  Epicurus,  of  Petronius  Arbiter,  of 
Villon,  of  Rabelais,  of  Fielding.  The  whole 
basis  of  him  is  sensuality,  and  I  hate  to  say 
this  in  a  country  such  as  England,  where  the 
maypole  has  been  cut  down  and  Calvinism 
reigns  supreme,  where  sensuality,  that  once 
whispered  melodies  into  the  ears  of  Pan  and 
hung  garlands  about  the  birch-trees,  has 
been  hated  and  hunted  until  it  had  to  take 
refuge  in  the  dirty  talk  of  the  public- house. 
The  sensuality  of  Anatole  France  is  like 
sap  arising  in  the  trees,  like  the  moth  circling 
about  the  candle;  it  is  joyous,  frank,  un- 
ashamed ;  the  world  and  all  that  is  in  it  is 
its  toy.  In  this  country  it  has  become  dis- 
gusting to  like  good  food;  you  must  not 
even  talk  of  food,  it  is  not  done  (and  the 
result  is  English  food,  the  laughing-stock 
of  the  universe).  But  listen  to  Anatole 
France  on  food  in  Histoire  Comique : 
H  113 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

"  The  Castelnaudary  stew  contains  the 
preserved  thighs  of  geese,  whitened  beans, 
bacon  and  a  little  sausage.  To  be  good  it 
must  have  been  cooked  lengthily  upon  a 
gentle  fire.  Clemence's  stew  has  been  cook- 
ing for  twenty  years.  She  puts  into  the 
pan  sometimes  goose  or  bacon,  sometimes 
sausage  or  beans,  but  it  is  always  the  same 
stew.  The  foundation  endures ;  this  ancient 
and  precious  foundation  gives  the  stew  the 
quality  that  in  the  pictures  of  old  Venetian 
masters  you  find  in  the  women's  amber 
flesh.  .  .  ." 

Here  speaks  the  old  Gaul  who  feasted  on 
roast  meats,  drank  much  hydromel,  and  as 
he  caressed  the  long  droop  of  his  fair 
moustache  cast  a  negligent,  amiable  glance 
over  his  white- skinned,  blue- eyed,  black- 
haired  women.  For  the  Gaul  never  forgot 
women;  he  had  anticipated  Nietzsche  by 
two  thousand  years  or  so,  and  decided  that 
man  was  for  war  and  woman  for  the  recrea- 
tion of  the  warrior.  This  offends  some  of 
us  moderns,  for  the  sensuality  of  the  French- 
man, so  strong  in  Anatole  France,  the 
114 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


sensuality  of  eating  and  drinking,  of 
burlesque,  of  gross  stories,  some  of  them 
concerned  with  an  apartment  ignored  in  the 
English  household  since  the  days  of  William 
IV.,  lies  thick  over  love. 

It  seems  a  pity  to  us  that,  in  spite  of  all 
his  aestheticism,  of  his  sense  of  beauty,  it 
should  look  as  if  Anatole  France's  view  of 
love  were  contained  in  the  famous  phrase 
of  Alphonse  Karr,  or  Gustave  Droz,  I  forget 
which: 

"  Love  ?     A  matter  of  skin." 

Well,  love  is  not  a  matter  of  skin,  at  least 
for  us,  and  one  would  wish  that  Anatole 
France  should  have  found  something  ethereal, 
symbolic  in  the  union  of  man  and  woman. 
I  cannot  explain  what  I  mean :  I  detest  the 
word  "spirituality,"  and  I  hardly  know 
what  I  miss  in  this  French  view  of  love 
that  Anatole  France  holds,  but  I  miss  it. 
This  view  is  not  exactly :  "  One  woman 
is  as  good  as  another,"  but  it  certainly 
is :  "  One  woman  is  as  good  as  another 
if  she  is  good-looking."  It  is  all  flesh,  and 
115 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

aesthetics,  which  do  redeem  the  flesh,  do  not 
redeem  it  fully.  The  French  heroine, 
beloved  of  Anatole  France's  heroes,  is  merely 
Galatea  animate ;  she  is  just  the  beautiful 
woman  descended  from  her  pedestal  at  the 
call  of  her  chosen  lover.  Nothing  calls  to 
him  save  the  warm  body  that  once  was 
beautiful  marble,  and  he  is  content.  The 
Red  Lily  illustrates  that  idea.  Here  we 
have  two  people,  an  unfaithful  wife  and  her 
lover.  We  are  convinced  by  the  suggestion 
of  extreme  passion  that  these  people  have 
reached  the  apogee  of  love.  It  is  an  un- 
happy, tormented  love,  unrolling  near  the 
Arno.  It  develops  among  a  curious  society 
of  literary  people,  is  coloured  by  the  usual 
literary  and  artistic  ideas  of  Anatole  France. 
Dechartre,  the  lover,  is  tormented  because 
his  mistress  had  before  him  another  lover; 
he  is  not  tormented  by  the  existence  of  her 
husband.  His  distress  grows  so  intense 
when  he  begins  to  suspect,  quite  wrongly, 
that  she  is  unfaithful  to  him  with  her  first 
lover,  produces  a  strain  so  great,  that  their 
116 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


alliance  breaks.  Well,  that  is  natural 
enough,  for,  as  Anatole  France  himself 
remarks,  man  is  possessive  and  woman  is 
not,  because  she  has  had  to  get  used  to 
sharing,  but  it  is  difficult  to  understand  at 
first  sight  why  Dechartre  should  be  jealous 
of  another  lover,  and  not  jealous  of  a 
husband.  The  answer,  which  is  not  evident 
to  everybody,  is  that  the  act  of  love  is 
symbolic  and  that  a  husband,  taken  as  a 
social  base,  is  not  comparable  with  a  lover 
taken  for  love.1  That  is  true  enough,  but 
where  fault  must  be  found  with  the  Gallic 
view  is  that  there  is  not  a  single  phrase  in 
the  book  to  show  that  Dechartre,  repre- 
sented as  in  the  throes  of  extreme  love, 
wishes  to  detach  his  mistress  from  her 
husband.  He  never  suggests  that  he  wants 
her  to  live  with  him  always,  that  he  wants 
her  society,  her  presence,  the  subtle  delight 
of  hearing  her  walk  in  the  room  above.  He 
wants  nothing  but  her  body  from  four  to  six, 

1  Relations  between  husband  and  wife  may  have 
ceased,  but  this  does  not  touch  the  argument. 
117 


WEITEES  OF  THE  DAY 

twice  a  week:  he  is  honourable,  he  is  an 
artist,  but  he  is  vile,  he  is  a  beast.  Big 
words  these,  but  I  have  come  to  think  that 
if  we  differ  at  all  from  the  brute  it  is  by  the 
courage  with  which  we  face  the  consequences 
of  our  deeds,  by  delicacies  of  feeling  in  which 
caresses  have  no  place,  by  something  that 
is  more  than  elegance,  that  can  maintain 
love  when  sickness,  ugliness  appear  and 
aesthetics  fall  to  the  ground.  There  is  not 
in  the  works  of  Anatole  France  a  line  de- 
voted to  love.  Whether  in  The  Red  Lily  or 
in  The  Merrie  Tales  of  Jacques  Tournebroche, 
or  in  any  of  the  episodes,  "  love  "  is  either 
light  and  false  and  lying,  or  coarse  and 
brutal,  or  limited  by  the  passing  efflorescence 
of  a  beauty  that  must  die.  He  seems,  like 
every  other  Frenchman  I  can  think  of,  un- 
able to  understand  what  the  Anglo-Saxon 
means  by  idealism  in  love,  by  that  idealism 
so  often  made  absurd  by  sentiment,  but  yet 
delightful,  and  distinguished  from  the  im- 
pulse of  a  stag  in  rut. 

And  yet,  strange  to  say,  Anatole  France 
118 


ANATOLE  FKANCE 


has  written  a  few  stories  in  which  there  is 
a  hint  of  mysticism.  Histoire  Comique  is  a 
story  of  a  haunting;  in  Adrienne  Buquet  there 
is  telepathy;  in  The  Graven  Stone  a  fatal 
influence.  There  is  Putois  too,  that  famous 
tale  of  a  metaphysical  conception  in  virtue 
of  which  a  man  who  was  originally  a  joke 
ends  "  like  a  mythological  deity,  in  becoming 
actual."  There  is  A  Daughter  of  Lilith,  a 
tale  of  an  immortal  and  fatal  descendant 
of  the  pre- Adamites.  But  those,  I  feel,  are 
intellectual  exercises,  and  I  suspect  that  they 
spring  from  a  passing  idea  of  the  author: 
"I  think  I'll  write  a  mystical  story;  it 
would  be  rather  fun." 

The  true  Anatole  France  which  hides 
under  the  sentimental  old  gentlemen,  so 
cynical  and  so  human,  born  so  cold  and  to- 
day so  young,  is  the  irreverent,  jolly,  blas- 
phemous Frenchman  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
I  have  said  this  often  and  quoted  much  in 
support  because  I  want  to  make  the  English 
understand  what  is  so  difficult  for  them  to 
understand:  the  Gaul  and  his  joviality. 
119 


WRITERS  OF  THE  DAY 

Still  I  cannot  resist  quoting  a  story  from 
Penguin  Island,  which  I  am  compelled  to 
condense : 

There  was  once  a  king  and  he  had  a 
beautiful  queen.  At  their  court  lived  a 
young  monk,  called  Oddoul,  who  resisted 
the  devil  and  even  woman.  So  the  queen, 
being  woman  and  ambitious,  attempted 
his  seduction.  She  called  him  into  her 
chamber,  and  he  would  not  look  upon  her. 
She  held  out  her  arms  to  him,  and  he  fled. 
Then  in  her  fury,  as  he  fled,  she  called  the 
guard  and  accused  Oddoul  of  having 
attempted  to  ravish  her.  He  was  thrown 
into  gaol.  But  in  the  night,  as  he  waited 
for  the  time  to  come  when  he  would  be  led 
out  to  be  burnt  alive,  the  cell  was  visited 
by  the  angel  of  the  Lord.  And  the  angel 
said :  "  What  ?  Hast  thou  not  done  what 
the  Queen  accuses  thee  of  ?  "  "No,"  said 
Oddoul.  "Then,"  cried  the  angel,  "what 
art  thou  doing  here,  idiot  ?  "  The  angel 
of  the  Lord  opened  the  door  and  Oddoul 
found  himself  driven  out  of  the  prison. 
Scarcely  had  he  gone  down  into  the  street 
when  a  hand  from  high  above  emptied 
upon  his  head  a  pailful  of  slops.  And 
120 


ANATOLE  FKANCE 


he  thought :   "  Mysterious  are  Thy  designs, 

0  Lord,  and  Thy  ways  impenetrable." 

It  is  not  easy  to  understand  Anatole 
France  because,  like  other  men,  he  is  neither 
good  nor  evil;  he  is  merely  what  he  is. 

1  do  not  ask  anyone  to  forgive  him  because 
he  loved  much,  nor  to  try  and  understand, 
if  that  is  the  only  way  of  forgiving  him. 
It  is  very  much  better  to  thank  him  for 
having  brought  into  the  dusty  old  lumber- 
room  of  stale  ideas  the  breath  of  the  new ; 
for  having  proclaimed  pity  in  a  world  that 
had  slid  into  callousness ;    for  having  been 
gay  when  the  creeds  bade  us  be  sad.     To 
do  that,  if  one  can,  is  enough,  for  though  one 
may  not  understand  him  quite,  the  times 
not  yet  being  enlightened,   one  can  offer 
him   the   supreme   tribute   of   loving   him 
without  understanding. 


121 


A  BIBLIOGRAPHY  OF  ANATOLE 
FRANCE'S  PRINCIPAL  WRITINGS 

FRENCH  TITLES 

NOTE. — These  bibliographies  are  not  the  work  of  Mr  W.  L. 
George. 

Alfred  de  Vigny  (Bachelin-Deflorenne).     1868. 

Poiimes  Dor6s  (Lemerre).     1873. 

Lea  Noces  Corinthiennes  (Lemerre).     1902. 

Jocaste  et  le  Chat  Maigre  (Calmann-Levy).     1879.     (Th. 

Nelson.)     1912. 

Le  Crime  de  Sylvestre  Bonnard  (Calmann-Levy).     1881. 
Les  Desirs  de  Jean  Servien  (Lemerre).     1882.     (Calmann- 
Levy.)     1907. 

Le  Livre  de  Mon  Ami  (Calmann-Levy).     1885. 
Balthasar    et    la    Beine    Balkis    (Calmann-Levy).      1889. 

(Carteret.)     1899. 
Thais  (Calmann-Levy).  1890.  (Bamagnol.)  1900.  (Ferroud.) 

1909. 

L'Etui  de  Nacre  (Calmann-Levy).     1892. 
La  Botisserie  de  la  Beine  Pedauque  (Calmann-Levy).    1893. 
Les  Opinions  de  M.  J6rome  Coignard  (Calmann-Levy).  1893. 
L'Elvire  de  Lamartine  (Champion).     1893. 
Le  Lys  Bouge  (Calmann-Levy).     1894.    (Romagnol.)    1903. 
Le  Jardin  d' Epicure  (Calmann-Levy).     1895.     Le  Puits  de 

Sainte-Claire(C'aZmann-L^ui/).  1895.  (Le  Livre  Contem- 

porain.)     1908. 
Clio  (Calmann-Levy).     1900. 
L'Orme  du  Mail  [Histoire  Contemporaine]  (Calmann-Levy). 

1897. 
Le  Mannequin  d'Osier  [Histoire  Contemporaine]  (Calmann- 

L6vy).     1897. 

122 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


L'Anneau        d'Am6thyste        [Histoire        Contemporaine] 

(Calmann-Levy).     1899. 
Monsieur    Bergeret    a    Paris    [Histoire    Contemporaine] 

(Calmann-Levy).     1901. 
Pierre  Noziere  (Lemerre).     1899. 

Oainquebille,  Putois,  Riquet  (Calmann-Levy).     1904. 
Histoire  Comique  (Calmann-Levy).     1903;    1911. 
Sur  la  Pierre  Blanche  (Calmann-Levy).     1905. 
L'Eglise  et  la  Republique  (E.  Pelletan).     1905. 
Vie   de   Jeanne    d'Aro    (Calmann-Levy).     1908.     (Manzi- 

Joyant.)     1909. 

L'lle  des  Pingouins  (Calmann-Levy).     1908. 
Les   Contes   de   Jacques   Tournebroche    (Calmann-Levy). 

1908. 
Les     Sept     Femmes     de     Barbe-Bleue     (Calmann-Levy). 

1909. 

Les  Dieux  ont  Soif  (Calmann-Levy).     1912. 
La  Revolte  des  Anges  (Calmann-Levy).     1914. 
La  Vie  Litteraire,  Series  i.,  ii.,  iii.  and  iv.  (Calmann-Levy). 

1891. 

Le  Genie  Latin  (A.  Lemerre).     1913.     (E.  Pelletan.)     1909. 
L'Abeille  (Charavay  Frerea).     1883. 

All  the  above  are  Paris  publishers. 


ENGLISH   BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Mother  of  Pearl.     Translated  by  F.  Chapman  (Lane).  1908. 
The  Red  Lily.     Translated  by  W.  Stephens  (Lane).     1908. 
The  Red  Lily.     Popular  edition  (Lane).     1913. 
The    Garden    of   Epicurus.     Translated   by    A.    Allinson 

(Lane).     1908. 

Thais.     Translated  by  R.  B.  Douglas  (Lane).     1909. 
The  Crime  of  Sylvestre  Bonnard.     Translated  by  Lafcadio 

Hearn  (Lane).     1909. 

123 


WKITERS  OF  THE  DAY 


The  Crime  of  Sylvestre  Bonnard.     Popular  edition  (Lane). 

1914. 

My  Friend's  Book.     Translated  by  J.  L.  May  (Lane).    1913. 
The  Life  of  Joan  of  Arc,  in  2  vols.     Translated  by  W. 

Stephens  (Lane).     1909. 
The  Well  of  St  Clare.     Translated  by  A.  Allinson  (Lane). 

1909. 
The  White  Stone.     Translated  by  C.  E.  Roche  (Lane). 

1909. 

Penguin  Island.     Translated  by  A.  W.  Evans  (Lane).  1909. 
Balthasar.     Translated  by  Mrs  J.  Lane  (Lane).     1909. 
The    Wickerwork    Woman :     A   Chronicle   of   Our   Own 

Times.    Translated  by  M.  P.  Willcocks  (Lane).     1910. 
Merrie  Tales  of  Jacques  Tournebroche  and  Child  Life  in 

Town    and    Country.     Translated    by    A.    Allinson 

(Lane).     1910. 
The  Elm  Tree  on  the  Mall:    A  Chronicle  of  Our  Own 

Times.    Translated  by  M.  P.  Willcocks  (Lane).     1910. 
Complete    Limited    Edition   in    English.     Edited   by    F. 

Chapman  (Lane).     1911. 
Honey   Bee :    A   Fairy   Story   for    Children.     Translated 

by  Mrs  John  Lane  (Lane).     1911. 
Jocasta  and  the  Famished  Cat.     Translated  by  A.  Farley 

(Lane).     1912. 
Jocaste  et  le  Chat  Maigre.     Noziere  Collection  (Nelson). 

1914. 
Aspirations  of  Jean  Servien.     Translated  by  A.  Allinson 

(Lane).     1912. 
The  Opinions  of  Jerome  Coignard.     Translated  by  Mrs 

Wilfrid  Jackson  (Lane).     1912. 
At  the  Sign  of  the  Reine  P6dauque.     Translated  by  Mrs 

Wilfrid  Jackson.    Introduction  by  W.  J.  Locke  (Lane). 
1912. 
The  Gods  are  Athirst.     Translated  by  A.  Allinson  (Lane). 

1913. 

The  Gods  are  Athirst.     Popular  edition  (Lane).     1916. 
Magill's  Series  of  Modern  French  Writers,  No.  3  (Sower). 
The  Revolt  of  the  Angela.     Translated  by  Mrs  Wilfrid 

Jackson  (Lane).     1914. 

124 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


On  Life  and  Letters.     Translated  by  A.  W.  Evans.     First 

Series  (Lane).     1911. 
On  Life  and  Letters.    Translated  by  A.  W.  Evans.    Second 

Series  (Lane).     1913. 


AMERICAN  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

L'Abeille.     Edited  by  C.  P.  Lebon.     Translated  by  Peter 

Wright  (Heath). 
Bee  :   The  Princess  of  the  Dwarfa.     Retold  in  English  by 

Peter  Wright  (Button).     1912. 
Le  Crime  de  Sylvestre  Bonnard.     Edited  by  C.  H.  C. 

Wright  (Holt).     1904. 
The  Crime  of  Sylvestre  Bonnard.     Translated  by  Lafcadio 

Hearn  (Harper).     1906. 
Le  Livre  de  Mon  Ami,  Le  Livre  de  Pierre.     Edited  by  O.  G. 

Guerlac  (Holt).     1905. 
Thais.     A  play  in  four  acts   by  Paul  Wilstach   (Bobbs- 

Merrill).     1911. 

La  Vie  de  Jeanne  d'Arc  (Goupil).     1909. 
Monsieur  Bergeret :   Passage  de  PHistoire  Contemporaine. 

Edited  by  F.  H.  Dike  (Burdett). 
Girls  and  Boys  :    Scenes  from  the  Country  and  the  Town. 

Illustrations  in  colour  and  pen  and  ink  by  Boutet  de 

Monvel  (Duffield).     1913. 
La  Revolte  des  Anges  (Bretano).     1914. 

[All  the  titles  published  in  Great  Britain  by  Mr  Lane 
are  also  issued  in  the  United  States  by  the  John  Lane  Co. 
in  a  uniform  edition.] 


126 


INDEX 

Agnosticism,  70 
Amyous  and  Celestin,  64 
L'Anneau  d'Amethyste,  29 

Monsieur  Bergeret  a  Paris,  61  n. 
Bierce,  Ambrose,  50 
Blasphemy,  68 
Brandes,  Georg,  9,  13,  19 
Adrienne  Buquet,  119 

Caine,  Hall,  56 

Calmette,  M.  F.,  8 

La  Chemise,  99 

The  Church  and  the  Republic,  89 

College  Stanislas,  14 

Colonial  Movement,  96 

Coloured  Races,  95 

Contemporary  History,  14,  29,  35 

Crainquebille,  54 

The  Crime  of  Sylvestre  Bonnard,  15,  17 

A  Daughter  of  Lilith,  119 

Lea  Desire  de  Jean  Servien,  15,  22 

The  Dream,  57 

Dreyfus,  36,  52 

The  Elm  Tree  on  the  Mall,  37 

The  Famished  Cat,  15,  17 
Food,  113 

126 


INDEX 


Le  Oenie  Latin,  55 

The  Gods  are  Athirst,  15,  22,  83,  86,  87 

The  Graven  Stone,  119 

Gulliver's  Travels,  35 

Histoire  Comique,  119 
Historical  Work,  77 

Japan,  96 
Jocasta,  15,  16 

Komm  VAtrebate,  65 

Lady  of  Verona,  The,  64 

Lane,  John,  10  n. 

Life  of  Joan  of  Arc,  The,  78,  86 

Literary  Criticism,  55 

Love,  115 

Machiavelli,  49 

The  Merrie  Tales  of  Jacques  Tournebroche,  118 

Mother  of  Pearl,  23 

La  Muiron,  65 

My  Friend's  Book,  14,  21,  22 

The  Mystery  of  the  Blood,  64 

Mysticism,  119 

Napoleon  III.,  40 

New  Atlantis,  33 

Les  Noces  Corinthiennes,  14 

Pierre  Noziere,  14 

Ohnet,  Georges,  56 

On  Life  and  Letters,  8,  55 

Opinions  of  Jerome  Coignard,  64 

127 


INDEX 


Penguin  Island,  29,  35,  74,  120 

Philosophy,  112 

Formes  Doris,  14 

The  Procurator  of  Judaea,  66 

Putois,  119 

The  Red  Lily,  17,  118 

Renan,  82 

Revolt  of  the  Angels,  The,  22,  74,  87 

Religion,  60 

Riquet,  61  n. 

Satire,  27-28 

The  Security,  64 

Shaw,  G.  B.,  28 

Short  Way  with  Dissenters,  A,  35 

Socialism,  65 

Thais,  71,  75 
Thibault,  14 

Utopia,  97 

The  Well  of  St  Clare,  63 

Wells,  H.  G.,  28,  97 

The  White  Stone,  91 

The  Wickerwork  Woman,  41 


000  021  077     3 


